U.S. County-Level Bar Closure and Reopening Orders from March 2020 to May 2021

State and territorial executive orders, administrative orders, resolutions, and proclamations for COVID-19 were collected and coded to determine when bars were subject to closing and reopening requirements. The dataset provides a daily breakdown of these legal orders at the county level across U.S. states and territories. Data collection was conducted by the CDC and spans from March 11, 2020 through May 31, 2021.

Use Cases

• Analyze the duration and frequency of bar closure orders at the county level to assess public health policy intensity.
• Map the geographic progression of bar reopening orders across states and territories during the specified time range.
• Study the relationship between the issuance of executive orders, administrative orders, resolutions, or proclamations and subsequent public health metrics.
• Compare mitigation policy adoption timelines for bars across different counties and states.

Strengths

• Data is derived from official government documents and press releases, excluding news media reports.
• Covers a defined 14.5-month period critical for COVID-19 policy analysis.
• Provides granularity at the county level for state and territorial orders.
• Collection and coding process included quality assurance by multiple coders.

Limitations

• Only includes orders expressly closing or reopening bars; recommendations and other restrictions are excluded.
• Effective and expiration dates are coded using only the date provided, without time-of-day precision.
• Orders not available through publicly accessible websites are not included, potentially creating gaps.

Provenance

Source

United States Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Collection Method

Orders were collected from government websites, cataloged, and coded in Microsoft Excel by a coder with additional coders conducting quality assurance.

Time Range

March 11, 2020 through May 31, 2021.

Freshness

Dataset was last updated on the platform in February 2026, though the core data covers events through May 2021.

Geography

U.S. states and territories, broken down to the county level.