Releasing new data fields in event dataset

Original data collection of PHSM began on March 28, 2020. Since then, governments have implemented a wide variety of PHSM often with increasing nuance (e.g. with regards to the geographic or demographic targets of a given policy). While Version 1.0 of the dataset only released data from questions in the original survey, Version 1.1 releases data from new questions that have been added over the course of first year of data collection. For more information about the additional fields and options added to the dataset, please see our codebook

1. update_level_var: More detailed information as to what dimension of a policy is being updated (i.e., strengthened or relaxed)
2. pdf_link: Link to PDF of the original source used to document a policy
3. institution_cat: Information as to whether a business or government service is considered essential or non-essential according to the government entity in charge of implementing a given PHSM
4. institution_conditions: Information about what conditions a school, business or government service is allowed to open under (e.g., limited number of people allowed on premises)
5. type_new_admin_coop: Information about the nature of a given cooperative effort if different governments decide to cooperate with each other (e.g. country A cooperates with country B)
6. COVID-19 Vaccines: We have added new questions to capture various dimensions of the global COVID-19 Vaccine rollout including information on:

• The manufacturing firm (type_vac_cat)
• Whether vaccines are allowed to be mixed and matched (type_vac_mix)
• The regulatory status of a given COVID-19 vaccine (type vac reg)
• Information on the type of purchase order for COVID-19vaccines (type_vac_purchase)
• Information on the overall criteria used for deciding how to administer COVID-19 vaccines (type vac group).
• Information on the number of priority groups for COVID-19 Vaccine distribution, given that this is the criteria used for deciding how to administer COVID-19 vaccines (type_vac_group_rank)
• Information as to where COVID-19 vaccines are being administered (type_vac_loc)
• Information as to who is responsible for the economic cost of a given COVID-19 vaccine shot (type_vac_who_pays)
• Information as to what entity has been placed in primary charge for the COVID- 19 vaccination process (type_vac_dist_admin)
• Information as to the monetary resource devoted for a given COVID-19 vaccine policy ( typ_vac_cost_num, type_vac_cost_unit, type_vac_cost_scale, type_vac_gov_perc)
• Information as the volume of COVID-19 vaccines (e.g. shots) in question for a given COVID-19 vaccine policy (type_va_ amt_num, type_vac_amt_unit, type_vac_amt_scale, type_vac_amt_gov_perc)

7. target_init_same: Whether the geographic target of a policy is the same as the policy initiator (e.g. target init same ==0 if lockdown policy implemented by government A in country A while target init same ==1 if an external border restrictions is im- plemented by government A against country B)
8. target_intl_org: Which international organization a policy is targeted to, if applicable. 11
9. target_who_gen: Information as to what special populations (e.g. asylum seekers, in- digenous peoples) a policy targets, if applicable
10. date_end_spec: Qualitative information on a policy’s end date

First wide data release + 6 new indices

We have now released 6 indices of COVID-19 restrictions along with wide data in panel format for 156 policy indicators. These are much easier to use for applied analyses. From now on this repo will only host the raw data (policy record) format. For the wide data + indices, please go to this repo: https://github.com/saudiwin/corona_index.

schema update

Added a new domestic_policy variable to show whether a policy relates only to people resident within a country's borders (as opposed to policies targeting other countries).

Policy Activity Index Released

With this dataset release, we are including our time-varying policy activity index. Based on a Bayesian measurement model, it collapses all of our many indicators into a single score representing the difficulty in implementing the policies and the willingness of countries to implement costly policies. This score is the best way to holistically compare countries in our data across the many indicators.

Further dataset schema update

Now all rows in the release are unique to policy sub-category as well as main category, permitting easier use.

More detail in policy categories

In this release, we include the column type_sub_cat which contains a comma-separated list of even more granular detail about policies. In future iterations we hope to clean this column to make each row a unique policy-sub-category.

Update to dataset schema

We have made some changes to the data format:

• The basic dataset is now country - day - policy record format for each observation (prior releases did not enforce that strictly).

• The larger combined dataset is first merged to JHU cases/deaths/recovered to make a more complete time series. Also, the data is now merged on date_start rather than date_announced.

First dataset release

We have released an initial dataset released. Current coverage is over 150 countries. We are working to round out coverage across countries and also validate more of the existing data. Not all fields in the dataset have been released yet, but we are working on adding more as they come in.