Hannah Ritchie, Edouard Mathieu, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Cameron Appel, Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Diana Beltekian and Max Roser (2020) - "Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus' [Online Resource]
December 24, 2021
The Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) project calculate a Stringency Index, a composite measure of nine of the response metrics.1
The nine metrics used to calculate the Stringency Index are:
- school closures
- workplace closures
- cancellation of public events
- restrictions on public gatherings
- closures of public transport
- stay-at-home requirements
- public information campaigns
- restrictions on internal movements
- international travel controls
You can explore changes in these individual metrics across the world in the sections which follow in this article.
The index on any given day is calculated as the mean score of the nine metrics, each taking a value between 0 and 100. See the authors’ full description of how this index is calculated.
A higher score indicates a stricter response (i.e. 100 = strictest response). If policies vary at the subnational level, the index is shown as the response level of the strictest sub-region.
It’s important to note that this index simply records the strictness of government policies. It does not measure or imply the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country’s response. A higher score does not necessarily mean that a country’s response is ‘better’ than others lower on the index.