School of Public Health

The aim of the COVID-19 Pandemic Policy Monitor (COV-PPM) project was to improve the data basis of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), implemented to contain the spread of Covid-19 infections. The COV-PPM project prospectively documented NPIs on a daily basis from January 2020 to June 2022. The documentation of containment measures was carried out at the level of 32 European countries (EU27, EEA, UK) as well as at the level of the 16 German federal states (NUTS2). The project was funded by the German Ministry of Health (BMG) and by the rectorate of Bielefeld University.

The documented NPIs refer to restrictions, closures, relaxations, or changes in 13 areas of public and social life. These categories include public events, public institutions, public spaces, public transport, citizens movement and mobility, travelling and border closures, healthcare system, vulnerable and risk groups, economy, testing policies, nose and mouth protection, vaccination policies, and miscellaneous measures. Within each category, NPIs were coded for each calendar day and specific measures were complemented with descriptive comments. These comments served to contextualise the measures and allow to generate disaggregated variables. The documentation was carried out in a standardised manner and was adapted and expanded over the course of the pandemic to include new measures. Primary sources for the documentation of NPIs included legal regulations issued by the countries, official government websites, and information provided by ministries, health authorities, and public health institutes, occasionally supplemented by press releases and news reports.

The COV-PPM dataset enables the investigation of a wide range of research questions, examining the impact of containment measures on the COVID-19 pandemic across different geographical regions. It also allows the analysis of differential effectiveness of NPIs under consideration of contextual and societal factors, temporal changes in NPIs, and the interaction of various combinations of measures. Moreover, the documentation facilitates data triangulation and cross-validation of NPI patterns and timelines with other datasets on containment measures.