Governments are taking a wide range of measures in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. This tool aims to track and compare policy responses around the world, rigorously and consistently.
The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) systematically collects information on several different common policy responses that governments have taken to respond to the pandemic on 17 indicators such as school closures and travel restrictions. It now has data from more than 160 countries. The data is also used to inform a ‘Lockdown rollback checklist’ which looks at how closely countries meet four of the six World Health Organisation recommendations for relaxing ‘lockdown’.
Stringency and policy indices
OxCGRT collects publicly available information on 17 indicators of government responses. 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. Five of the indicators (H1-H5) record health system policies such as the COVID-19 testing regime or emergency investments into healthcare.
The data from the 17 indicators is aggregated into a set of four common indices, reporting a number between 1 and 100 to reflect the level of government action on the topics in question:
- an overall government response index (which records how the response of governments has varied over all indicators in the database, becoming stronger or weaker over the course of the outbreak);
- a containment and health index (which combines ‘lockdown’ restrictions and closures with measures such as testing policy and contact tracing, short term investment in healthcare, as well investments in vaccine)
- an economic support index (which records measures such as income support and debt relief)
- as well as the original stringency index (which records the strictness of ‘lockdown style’ policies that primarily restrict people’s behaviour).
Note that these indices simply record the number and strictness of government policies, and should not be interpreted as ‘scoring’ the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country’s response. A higher position in an index does not necessarily mean that a country’s response is ‘better’ than others lower on the index.
For data journalists and researchers
For media enquiries or interview requests, please contact Giulia Biasibetti.
- See the latest press release about the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker
- The most recent full dataset is available using our API or as a CSV of the data.
- Our codebook on Github explains the definitions for each variable.
- The data is also available in timeseries form and you can read how we calculate the different indices. These CSVs are also posted to GitHub, where we have additional notes and guidance on data quality for people exploring the underlying dataset.
- For a full description of the data and how it is collected, read the working paper ‘Variation in government response to COVID-19’.
- For the most up-to-date description of indicators, see our codebook on GitHub.
Recommended citation for data: Hale, Thomas, Sam Webster, Anna Petherick, Toby Phillips, and Beatriz Kira (2020). Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, Blavatnik School of Government. Data use policy: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY standard.
This data is provided free of charge. However, please consider contributing to the COVID-19 Fund for the World Health Organisation. You can also find out more about supporting the work of the Blavatnik School of Government.
Visualisations
- You can view interactive data visualisations of country data or heat map over time.
- The most recent versions of charts and maps are all available on Github.
- Interactive visualisations of each policy indicator are available at Our World in Data.
Transition Studies 