kids encyclopedia robot

Flatten the curve facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
20200403 Flatten the curve animated GIF
Measures such as social distancing and stay-at-home orders slow down the spread of the disease.

Flattening the curve is a public health strategy to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 virus during the COVID-19 pandemic. The curve being flattened is the epidemic curve, a representation of the number of infected people needing health care over time.

During an epidemic, a health care system can break down when the number of people infected passes the health care system's ability to take care of them.

Flattening the curve means slowing the spread of the epidemic so that the peak number of people requiring care at a time is reduced, and the health care system does not pass its capacity.

Flattening the curve relies on techniques such as quarantine, stay at home orders, and social distancing.

Images for kids

  • SIR model anim

    SIR model showing the impact of reducing the infection rate (\beta) by 76%

  • Queue during COVID-19 must be social distancing at ICONSIAM

    Queue markers at a shopping mall in Bangkok as a social distancing practicing

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Aplanar la curva para niños

kids search engine
All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles (including the article images and facts) can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise. Cite this article:
Flatten the curve Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.