‘FLATTENING THE CURVE'

NEEDS WELL-NETWORKED LOCAL INTERVENTIONS

- Kusal Perera

One of the best explanations on COVID-19 I heard was by Dr. Sumedha Jayasena, a Sri Lankan bio-technologist resident in California. His explanation was scientific and covered all aspects of the virus. He explained what ‘flattening the curve’ actually meant. The ‘curve’ is a graph that explains the pattern of the virus spread, and has three phases – the containment, expansion and the declining or clearance phase. The containment phase is where an affected person catalyses the virus spread. In this phase, a slow spread shows in a gradually rising graph. During this period, the virus can be controlled to keep the graph ‘flat.’ If this is not achieved, the next phase (expansion) is when the spread of the virus reaches a peak with speed. Then comes the declining or clearance phase. Sadly, his assessment was that Sri Lanka had gone beyond the containment phase and was reaching the expansion phase (listen from 34.22 to 34.58mns -https://youtu.be/axStgDZYZ5Y).

This implies we have missed out in containing the virus spread. He doesn’t blame any country for steps taken so far. Every country, he says, has its own identity, like specific cultural habits, political establishments, systems and social structures, religions and social attitudes. That ‘identity’ decides how a country responds to COVID-19. No doubt, some countries have adopted good preventive measures. But the best can only be evaluated in post-COVID-19 research analyses, Dr. Jayasena says.