COVID-19 epidemic: Power law spread and flattening of the curve

In this letter we analyze the real-time infection data of COVID-19 epidemic for nine nations. We observe that till 27 March 2020, the number of infected individuals (I(t)) in USA, Spain, Germany, Iran, France, and India are growing exponentially. On the contrary, I(t) curves for China and South Korea exhibits power law behavior before flattening of the curve. The derivative I(t), which is also the daily infection count, is proportional to I(t) for the exponential regime, but not for the power law regime. These valuable indicators could be used for epidemic forecast. We also argue that long-term community transmission and/or the transmission by asymptomatic carriers traveling long distances may be inducing the power law growth of the epidemic.