U.S. County-Level Restaurant Closure Orders During COVID-19
by United States Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention / ICPSR Harvested Dataverse·Updated 3mo ago
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Description
U.S. State and Territorial Orders Closing and Reopening Restaurants Issued from March 11, 2020 through August 15, 2021 by County by Day contains state and territorial executive orders, administrative orders, resolutions, and proclamations related to restaurant operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The dataset, created by the CDC's Public Health Law Program, is derived from publicly available government documents and is broken down to the county level. It covers orders issued from March 11, 2020, through August 15, 2021.
Use Cases
Analyze the duration and timing of restaurant closure and reopening requirements by county to assess policy impact on local economies.
Map the geographic spread of state and territorial executive orders and administrative orders to visualize regional pandemic response patterns.
Study the legal epidemiology of COVID-19 mitigation by tracking the issuance of proclamations and resolutions over time.
Correlate the effective and expiration dates of orders with public health outcomes at the county level.
Strengths
Data is derived from official government documents and press releases, excluding news media reports.
Covers a defined 17-month period from March 11, 2020, to August 15, 2021.
Includes quality assurance procedures with multiple coders reviewing the collected orders.
Limitations
Data consists exclusively of state and territorial orders; local county or city orders are not included.
Recommendations not included in an official order are excluded, potentially missing informal guidance.
Effective and expiration dates are coded using only the date provided, without distinction for the specific time of day.
Provenance
Source
United States Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Collection Method
State and territorial orders were collected from government websites, cataloged, and coded in Microsoft Excel by a primary coder with additional coders conducting quality assurance.
Time Range
March 11, 2020 through August 15, 2021
Freshness
Dataset was last updated on February 23, 2026, with plans for updates as new orders are collected.
Geography
United States states and territories, broken down to the county level
Orders not available through publicly accessible websites are not included. The data does not necessarily represent an official position of the CDC.