Georgia is named among the countries that are flattening the curve of the global pandemic of novel coronavirus.

A journalist of Foreign Policy writes that lessons learnt from Taiwan, Canada South Korea, Georgia and Iceland show that stopping of COVID-19 virus is possible. “Lessons from Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, Georgia, and Iceland show that the coronavirus can be stopped,” the journalist says.

According to the article, some success stories are unexpected. On the Don’t Touch Your Face podcast, Foreign Policy’s Amy Mackinnon singled out the early response of the country of Georgia. Despite its small size and struggling economy, the country began taking serious measures at the end of February, including closing schools and conducting widespread diagnostic tests. Georgia has so far confirmed 117 cases and no deaths from COVID-19.

“I think the fact that the government took it seriously from the very start has helped,” the Georgian journalist Natalia Antelava told Mackinnon. So has Georgia’s mindset. “This is a country that is used to crisis, and it is a country that has lived through civil wars and the Russian invasion in 2008 and a very dark period through the ’90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Antelava told Foreign Policy.