Daily confirmed cases (blue), daily deaths (red) for the CoViD-19. Ponderated mean on ten days (nominal day weights 10, day before 9, and so on up to day ten) which divides by ~10 the daily noise variation in order to underline the medium-term trend.

This chart has been made using the WHO daily reports (see https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/). Though countries are committed to report to WHO every day, some country reports are missing, leading to "dents" in the curve. This is caused by messy report and can't really be corrected. Please note that due to time zones and time of report, the figure for a given day according to WHO may not be that of official sources.

The growth and evolution of a pandemic in its initial stage is exponential, meaning that the percentage of increase from one day to another is (roughly) constant. This, in turn, means that in a semi-logarithmic plot, the slope is (roughly) constant, therefore the curve is (roughly) a straight segment. The public health policy is to bend the curve down. A change in the policy or its efficiency leads to a change in the slope.

To describe the pandemic's evolution, a daily report of victims or deaths is not really informative in the aftermath. The relevant description is, where are the slope changes, which indicate a change in the pandemic's regime? Those inflection points are the limits within which the description of what has occurred can be homogeneous.

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