The COVID-19 global pandemic has transformed almost every facet of human society throughout the world. Against an emerging, highly transmissible disease with no definitive treatment or vaccine, governments worldwide have implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to slow the spread of the virus. Examples of such interventions include community actions (e.g. school closures, restrictions on mass gatherings), individual actions (e.g. mask wearing, self-quarantine), and environmental actions (e.g. public facility cleaning).

We, at IBM Research, present the Worldwide Non-pharmaceutical Interventions Tracker for COVID-19 (WNTRAC), a comprehensive dataset consisting of over 7,000 NPIs implemented worldwide since the start of the pandemic. WNTRAC covers NPIs implemented across 261 countries and territories, and classifies NPI events into a taxonomy of 16 NPI categories. NPI events are automatically extracted daily from Wikipedia articles using natural language processing techniques and manually validated to ensure accuracy and veracity.

We hope that the dataset is valuable for policymakers, public health leaders, and researchers in modeling and analysis efforts for controlling the spread of COVID-19.