flatten the curve

American  

[flat-n thuh kurv] / ˈflæt n ðə ˈkɜrv /

idiom

1. (during a disease outbreak) to use public health measures to achieve a more gradual increase and decrease in the number of new cases, spreading the same total number of cases over a longer period of time, as depicted by a gently sloping curved line on a graph.

   Flattening the curve will prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with patients.

---

Etymology

Origin of flatten the curve

First recorded in 2005–10

Example Sentences

The plan is then to move to a "delay phase" as full community transmission is established – using policies like home isolation advice for those with symptoms to "flatten the curve" of the pandemic so that hospitals do not become overwhelmed.

From BBC

“If we can flatten the curve of demand on the student loan servicing environment by having people reach out in June, July and August … we can mitigate some of the pressures that are going to come to the system,” Buchanan said.

From Los Angeles Times

The question for this year, Mr. Olivet said, is “whether we were able to flatten the curve and even start pointing downwards.”

From New York Times

For more than a year, AP journalists interviewed sources and pored over thousands of documents to trace how technologies marketed to “flatten the curve” were put to other uses.

From Seattle Times

“It is never too late to flatten the curve,” says Xi Chen, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies China’s public-health system.

From Scientific American