U.S. County-Level Public Mask Mandates from April 2020 to August 2021
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
State and territorial executive orders, administrative orders, resolutions, and proclamations requiring mask-wearing in public were collected and coded by the CDC and partners. The dataset tracks these mandates at the county level across U.S. states and territories from April 10, 2020, through August 15, 2021. Orders were sourced from government websites and official press releases, with quality assurance performed by multiple coders.
Use Cases
Analyze the duration and temporal patterns of mask mandate effectiveness and expiration dates across counties.
Map the geographic implementation of state and territorial executive orders and proclamations at the county level.
Study the legal epidemiology of COVID-19 mitigation by tracking administrative orders and resolutions over time.
Compare public health policy adoption between states and specific counties within territories.
Strengths
Data collection involved quality assurance with one or more additional coders reviewing the primary coder's work.
Clear temporal coverage from April 10, 2020, to August 15, 2021, for tracking policy changes.
Granular geographic breakdown to the county level for state and territorial orders.
Limitations
Data excludes counties that opted out of state mandates pursuant to state law, creating incomplete coverage.
Effective and expiration dates were coded without distinction for the time of day, which may affect precise duration calculations.
Only includes orders expressly requiring masks; recommendations and news media reports were excluded.
Provenance
Source
United States Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Collection Method
Executive orders, administrative orders, resolutions, and proclamations were collected from government websites, cataloged, and coded in Microsoft Excel.
Time Range
April 10, 2020, through August 15, 2021.
Freshness
Dataset was last updated on 2026-02-23, but the described data covers events through August 15, 2021.
Geography
U.S. states and territories, broken down to the county level.
These data do not necessarily represent an official position of the CDC. Any orders not available through publicly accessible websites were not included.