Data driven characterization of COVID-19

COVID-19 has caused more than 880.000 victims all over the world (September 2020); despite a large effort of the scientific community and of the governments, it is still a great problem, inducing most of the Nations to adopt restriction to mo-bility, social relations and economic activities. Since the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 appeared a rather mysterious virus, for which neither a vaccination nor specific medications exist. In this paper, COVID-19 is characterized by using the available data of total number of infected, healed and dead people to identify the contagion, the removed and the death rates. These values depend on various aspects related to the population characteristics, the general health conditions, the social and economical situations, as well as to other features not yet identified by the scientific community. The COVID-19 situation in Italy is herein explored, showing the great heterogeneity of the virus spread in different zones.