Two other studies using Benford's Law gave different conclusions:
Koch & Okamura (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3586413 ):
China’s distribution of first digits for confirmed cases is in line with Benford’s Law. Thus we reject the hypothesis that the Chinese data has been manipulated. It also matches the distribution found in the United States and Italy.
Junyi Zhang (https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.05695 ):
In this article, we propose a test of the reported case number of coronavirus disease 2019 in China with Newcomb-Benford law. We find a p-value of 92.8% in favour that the cumulative case numbers abide by the Newcomb-Benford law. Even though the reported case number can be lower than the real number of affected people due to various reasons, this test does not seem to indicate the detection of frauds.
Hope Gustavo could check and update your numbers. Thanks!
