U.S. County-Level Restaurant Closure and Reopening Orders from March 2020 to August 2021

March 11, 2020 through August 15, 2021 is the coverage period for this dataset of state and territorial executive orders, administrative orders, resolutions, and proclamations related to restaurant operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was collected and coded by the CDC's Public Health Law Program and partners, with data broken down to the county level. The dataset exclusively includes official government documents and press releases, excluding news media reports and non-binding recommendations.

Use Cases

• Analyze the duration and timing of restaurant closure requirements by county to model the economic impact of mitigation policies.
• Map the geographic rollout of business reopening orders across states and territories to study regional policy coordination.
• Track the issuance of executive orders, administrative orders, resolutions, and proclamations over time to identify phases of public health intervention.
• Compare effective and expiration dates of orders at the county level to assess compliance periods and policy stability.

Strengths

• Data covers a defined 17-month period from March 11, 2020 to August 15, 2021, a critical phase of the pandemic.
• Collection involved quality assurance with one primary coder and one or more additional coders conducting checks.
• Source material is restricted to official government documents or press releases, enhancing reliability over news media reports.
• Granularity is provided at the county level within states and territories, allowing for sub-state analysis.

Limitations

• Dataset is limited to publicly accessible orders; any requirements not published on government websites are excluded.
• Effective and expiration dates are coded using only the date provided, with no distinction for the specific time of day, which may affect precision for same-day analyses.
• The data consists exclusively of state and territorial orders and does not include local (city or municipal) government mandates.

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 team with quality assurance procedures.

Time Range

March 11, 2020 through August 15, 2021.

Freshness

Last updated on the platform was 2026-02-23, but the underlying data collection period ended on August 15, 2021.

Geography

United States, including states and territories, with data broken down to the county level.