Background An outbreak of a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)-infected pneumonia (COVID-19) was first occurred in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and then spread rapidly to other regions. It has been declared that at least one confirmed case infected by SARS-CoV-2 was found in each province of China by late January 2020. Methods We collected the time series data of the cumulative number of confirmed infected, dead, and cured cases from the health commissions in 31 provinces in mainland China. A simple descriptive model in a logistic form was formulated to infer the intrinsic epidemic rules of COVID-19. Furthermore, we compared the intrinsic epidemic rules of COVID-19 in Hubei with that of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Beijing, which was obtained from the Ministry of Public Health of China in 2003. Results The feature of data of three population groups in all the provinces could be well captured (R-square>0.95) by the proposed descriptive model with slight variation among different provinces. By comparing fitted parameters, we found that the fitted curve of the infected case is the earliest to be saturated and has the lowest semi-saturation period in both COVID-19 and SARS. While all three population groups of SARS are later to saturate and have a longer semi-saturation period than that of COVID-19. Conclusions Our model is robust and stable to depict the intrinsic growth rule for the cumulative number of confirmed infected, dead, and cured cases in 30 provinces, which could depict the epidemic situation in mainland China very well. Despite the virus caused SARS (SARS-CoV) and the virus caused COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) are homologous, their epidemiologic characteristics are quite different. The duration of the outbreak would be shorter for COVID-19.### Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.### Funding StatementThis study is sponsored by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1508903), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41621061) and the support of International Center for Collaborative Research on Disaster Risk Reduction (ICCR-DRR).### Author DeclarationsAll relevant ethical guidelines have been followed; any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained and details of the IRB/oversight body are included in the manuscript.YesAll necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived.YesI understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).YesI have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.YesData is obtained from the open website of the health commissions in 31 provinces in mainland China
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