Norway has passed Iran in Coronavirus case density, Denmark and Switzerland are close, while Spain and Sweden have just passed China

Like most people, I've been following the development of the coronavirus infection numbers with increasing concern recently. While checking these numbers I faced two difficulties in interpretation:

1. As the case numbers were showing the absolute number for each country, it was hard so see which number was "big" relative to other countries or regions
   
2. Trend data was not available on country level, which made it hard to compare how aggressive the change was in each area
   

Introducing case density

Case density can be defined as number_of_confirmed_cases / population_in_millions. Figure 1 below illustrates the development of this metric during the outbreak in February and March.

Figure 1. Coronavirus case density history on March 12, 2020.

For the human eye, exponential growth is hard to understand and compare. Figure 2. shows the same metric on the logarithmic scale:

Figure 2. Case density history on the logarithmic scale.

Interpretations

My interpretation of the country level status is the following:

1. China and South Korea seem to be the only areas where the epidemic is starting to be in control
   
2. Iceland has most cases compared to the population. Is it real or is the test coverage high as well?
   
3. Amount of cases in Norway and Denmark are exploding, but very likely lots of people are tested in these countries
   
4. Finland is experiencing the fastest growth of these countries today compared to the total number of cases  

I will be refreshing the data on this page and sharing my thoughts. What do the numbers tell you?

Disclaimer: the author works in the field of software engineering services and is by no means a healthcare or epidemiology professional. If you spot inconsistencies or errors please let me know!