As of February 29, 2020 Italy had reached 1,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. At this time Japan had 241 cases and the United States had 68 cases. As of March 27, 2020 all three countries were substantially above the 1,000 case mark. In fact, the United States has since overtaken the world for the most confirmed COVID-19 cases. The chart below shows the trends in the number of confirmed cases, starting on the day they each hit the 1,000 case mark.
As you can see in the chart above, the epidemic curve for the United States is much steeper than that of Italy. On the 17th day after hitting the 1,000 case mark the United States already had 121,478 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Italy was only at 27,980 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on their 17th day after hitting the 1,000 case mark. Japan on the other hand, despite having a first confirmed case before the United States, has kept a relatively flat curve, and not shown the exponential growth that many countries have seen.
The table below shows the number of days it has taken for the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to double in each country, since the 1,000 case mark between the United States and Italy. The amount of time it takes for cases to double in Italy has slowed down recently, while the United States has continued to double cases in under 3 days.
Number of Days to Double Cases in the U.S. versus Italy
| Country | 1k to 2k | 2k to 4k | 4k to 8k | 8k to 16k | 16k to 32k | 32k to 64k |
| U.S | 2d | 3d | 3d | 1d | 2d | 3d |
| Italy | 2d | 4d | 3d | 4d | 5d | 5d |
The United States is a much larger country than Italy, and when you adjust for population size, what you see, shown in the chart below, is that the trend line in the United States for confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents is tracking very closely to Italy.
The United States currently has 38 confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents compared to 1 confirmed case of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in Japan and 153 confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in Italy.
Data source: Confirmed COVID-19 cases from the data repository for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Visual Dashboard operated by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE). Downloaded March 29th, 2020.