Stringency index

Description

The stringency index data is a metric that summarizes the level of governmental measures enacted by the local states from March of 2020 and onward (Jorge et al., 2021). The dataset is divided into two types. The first contains the textual information of the measures applied by the head of the state or municipal government. After reading each text, we can classify the type of measures that were applied in the state or city, identifying also the period of the starting and end date of the measure. With the result, we can calculate a global metric of stringency, a combination of sub-indexes of different enforcement types, such as restrictions to events, closure of schools, etc, as presented in Jorge et al., 2021 .

Data access information

To have access to the text files of measures applied in each state or city in Brazil, our team has a collaboration agreement with JusBrasil, a startup that provides in an online platform the official jurisdiction documents, such as petitions, decree, new laws, that are created in/by the courts and any governmental sector. The collection of text is not openly available, and the direct access must have an agreement with the startup. Nevertheless, the stringency metric that summarizes the level of measure applied for the COVID-19 pandemic is created by our team and provided in our Github directory.

Methods of data collection

In the server of JusBrasil, we have access to all textual documents provided by the platform JusBrasil. To select the texts that may contain information about the measures employed to contain the pandemic, we search in each text available the keywords “covid-19” and “decreto”. The resulting data collected is used further for the purpose of our work. A different method of data collection in the early stage of the pandemic in Brazil was used prior to the collaboration with JusBrasil. The method is described in Jorge et al., 2021 and the data and its visualization is shown in their app at up to May 22, 2020.

Limitations of the stringency data

The data may be lacking all decrees for the municipal level and present a delay on its update.