  In this note we analyze the temporal dynamics of the coronavirus disease 2019
outbreak in China, Italy and France in the time window $22/01-09/03/2020$. A
first analysis of simple day-lag maps points to some universality in the
epidemic spreading, suggesting that simple mean-field models can be
meaningfully used to gather a quantitative picture of the epidemic spreading,
and notably the height and time of the peak of confirmed infected individuals.
  The analysis of the same data within a simple susceptible-(confirmed)
infected-recovered-deaths model indicates that the kinetic parameter that
describes the rate of recovery seems to be the same, irrespective of the
country, while the infection and death rates appear to be more variable. The
model places the peak in Italy around March 20$^{\rm th}$ 2020, with a maximum
number of confirmed infected individuals of about 16,000.
