The cases reported per country, or state are only a narrow window into what is actually happening. The most advanced medical testing company in the world, Roche, is Swiss-German so Germany's testing capability relative to most countries is off the charts. Combined with a highly distributed, yet also highly co-ordinated health care system they have been ahead of the curve in testing on every conceivable metric. As a result they have reported relatively high case totals, because they have been doing mass testing for a long time, but very low death rates because this enabled them to effectively isolate cases quickly.

As countries increase their testing capacity it is quite possible some countries (or states) will end up eventually reporting accelerating numbers of diagnoses even if the actual new case rate in the population is falling.

One way to mitigate that is to report only cases requiring hospital admission. This isn't ideal by any stretch, but is a reasonable proxy for the spread of the virus and at least gives a good indication of the impact on the health care system.