The Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) collects systematic information on which governments have taken which measures, and when. This can help decision-makers and citizens understand the stringency of governmental responses in a consistent way, aiding efforts to fight the pandemic. The OxCGRT systematically collects information on several different common policy responses governments have taken, scores the stringency of such measures, and aggregates these scores into a common Stringency Index.
This is a project from the Blavatnik School of Government. More information on the OxCGRT is available on the school's website: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/covidtracker. This README contains information about using the database.
Cite as: Thomas Hale, Sam Webster, Anna Petherick, Toby Phillips, and Beatriz Kira. (2020). Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. Blavatnik School of Government.
OxCGRT collects publicly available information on 17 indicators of government response. This information is collected by a team of over 100 volunteers from the Oxford community and is updated continuously.
We also include statistics on the number of reported Covid-19 cases and deaths in each country. These are taken from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) for most countries, and from the JHU CSSE data repository for the Chinese special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
Full descriptions of the policy indicators and their meaning can be found in our codebook.
Eight of the policy indicators (C1-C8) record information on containment and closure policies, such as school closures and restrictions in movement. Four of the indicators (E1-E4) record economic policies such as income support to citizens or provision of foreign aid. And five indicators (H1-H5) record health system policies such as the Covid-19 testing regime or emergency investments into healthcare.
Finally, we have a miscellaneous indicator (M1) for notes that do not fit elsewhere.
Prior to 25 April 2020 the OxCGRT had a structure of 13 indicators (labelled S1-S13). Data up until this point is archived and still available in the /legacy_data_20200425 folder.
We have published a working paper with our methodology, data collection protocols, and description of the individual indicators. (Although the most up-to-date description of indicators is always in the codebook.)
The Stringency Index is a nine-point aggregation of the eight containment and closure indicators as well as H1 (public information campaigns). It reports a number between 0 to 100 that reflects the overall stringency of the governments response. This is a measure of how many of the these nine indicators (mostly around social isolation) a government has acted upon, and to what degree.
It does not take into account any economic indicators or health system policies beyond H1.
We have published a short note with a detailed explanation of how the stringency index is calculated, and also how it is reported for days with incomplete data are handled. This also describes how we are reporting a legacy index while we finalise the transition from the old database structure.
The OxCGRT is updated continuously in real time. There are numerous ways you can access the raw data.
<-- status of connection to OxCGRT database
The /data folder in this repo contains recent exports from the OxCGRT database. You are welcome to build applications that draw directly from this repository.
- The CSV file /data/OxCGRT_latest.csv is a full export from the database presented in "country-day" format, with each a list of all indicators for each country as a single row each day. This CSV is updated every hour from the main database, and the badge above shows whether this data link is functioning correctly.
- The CSV file /data/OxCGRT_latest_withnotes.csv is a full export from the database in "country-day" format with a column of notes from our data collectors for each indicator. This is also updated every hour from the main database. Please note that some of the comments contain commas and other characters interpreted as a delimiter, and so may cause problems when parsing this CSV file.
- The CSV file /data/OxCGRT_latest_allchanges.csv is a full export from the database with a list of every change to the database. Every time a policy value changes, or every time a note is added to an indicator, it is represented with it's own new row.
- The /data/timeseries folder contains individual timeseries for each indicator (except S8-S11, for which our data coverage is not consistent) in CSV format, as well as a combined Excel file with a tab for each indicator. This is updated periodically – usually daily – and the date will be listed in the commit description and at the bottom of each sheet.
You can also get OxCGRT through our API. Documentation for this is published here.
It is important to understand the limitations of this dataset, most of which stem from the "live" nature of data collection. Our first goal is to publish a real-time dataset; but this carries risks. For instance, you may get a version of the database that was exported just as our team was half-way through entering new data, or that was exported in the window between an error being made and being fixed.
For details on how these issues around patchy or missing data affect our Stringency Index, please see our short note on calculating the Stringency Index.
- Be skeptical of reductions in stringency. Incomplete or missing data will sometimes cause a dip in the calculated stringency index (we conservatively treat some missing values as 0). For most countries, a reduction in stringency level that is recent, relatively small (less than 10 points), or only lasts a couple of days, is more likely the result of missing data rather than a legitimate reduction in stringency.
- Not all countries are equally up to date. We try to ensure that all countries are updated at least once a week, and most are updated more frequently. But there will inevitably be "patchiness" within the last week.
- For each country, some indicators will be missing in some days. As our data collectors find information, they will update a country in real time. This means a country may only have up-to-date information for some indicators, but not all.
- Some indicators and Stringency Index values will be changed retroactively. We aim to have a second pair of eyes review every data point in the OxCGRT. As at 19 May 2020, the majority of our 400,000 data points are yet to be reviewed. Inevitably, some things may be tweaked in this review process, leading to changes to past dates. We recommend you frequently download fresh data from OxCGRT, rather than relying on an old export.
- Null values are not the same as 0. The gaps described above – where countries are not up to date, or where some indicators are missing – will be represented as null values. These should not be interpreted as a 0, although for the purposes of calculating our Stringency Index, we conservatively treat them as such.
- Fiscal and monetary indicators are not evenly covered. We do not yet have comprehensive and high quality coverage of our indicators S8-S11. Apart from missing data, there are also frequent duplicate entries. You should check the data carefully before using these indicators.
Here are several examples of the type of analysis enabled by OxCGRT:
An individual chart of each country is in the /images/country charts folder.
