U.S. County-Level Stay-At-Home Orders During Early COVID-19 Pandemic

U.S. state, territorial, and county-level records catalog the issuance and status of stay-at-home orders from March 15 to May 5, 2020. The dataset was compiled by CDC teams from official government documents and press releases. It includes over 20 columns detailing order characteristics, jurisdictions, and effective dates.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between `Issuing_Jurisdiction` and `Stay_at_Home_Order_Recommendation` to compare state versus county policy approaches.
• Model the duration of orders by calculating intervals between `Effective_date` and `Expiration_date` columns.
• Map the spread of policies over time using the `date` and `FIPS_County` columns for geospatial analysis.
• Investigate reasons for non-effective orders by examining the `Effective_NA_Reason` and `Expiration_NA_Reason` fields.

Strengths

• Data covers a specific, critical 52-day period at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Includes granular geographic identifiers like `FIPS_State` and `FIPS_County` for precise location mapping.
• Over 20 documented columns provide detailed metadata on each order's source, status, and legal basis.

Limitations

• The dataset is temporally limited to a 52-day window in early 2020 and may not reflect later policy changes.
• Data collection relied on publicly accessible websites, potentially missing orders not published online.
• Excludes related interventions like business closures or gathering limits, focusing solely on stay-at-home directives.

Provenance

Source

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) via data.cdc.gov.

Collection Method

Orders were collected from government websites, cataloged and coded in Excel, with quality assurance checks by multiple coders.

Time Range

March 15, 2020 to May 5, 2020.

Freshness

Last updated in July 2021; no stated update frequency.

Geography

United States, including states, territories, and counties.