Canadian COVID-19 Intervention Timeline

October 13, 2022 — Explore our interactive tool, found below, that displays a high-level timeline of federal, provincial and territorial government interventions to reduce the spread of and improve health outcomes related to COVID-19. This tool highlights selected interventions from our COVID-19 Intervention Scan (see Featured resources section), along with case counts.

The data in this tool covers interventions and case counts from January 1, 2020, to May 31, 2022. As of this date, ��ϱ�will no longer update the tool or data set but will continue to make these resources publicly available on our website.

About this tool

Create a customized timeline of COVID-19 interventions and daily case counts by selecting a jurisdiction, time period and type of intervention. The data is refreshed every time you choose a filter. The export feature allows you to download this custom-made version (CSV file) of the timeline. Each intervention in the timeline has an ID number. This ID number corresponds to entries in the COVID-19 Intervention Scan, which provides details and links to sources for the intervention. (Note: This tool is compatible with most common web browsers — Chrome, Safari, Edge and IE — but the csv export functionality performs best in IE. It has been optimized for your desktop/laptop.)

View an accessible version of the Canadian COVID-19 Intervention Timeline (XLSX).

Additional information

The accuracy of this tool and scan is limited by the availability of information and timing of data collection. Both the COVID-19 Intervention timeline and scan provide information on key interventions for vaccines (e.g., implementation plans and frameworks, phase changes and milestones, population to be vaccinated, purchasing and allocation, regulatory approval); case finding and management (e.g., testing criteria, self-isolation, contract tracing); openings and closures (e.g., health, education, other services); physical distancing; health workforce capacity; health services; travel restrictions; public information (e.g., pandemic response plans, phase changes and alert levels) and other measures. We started our scan on March 19, 2020.

Not all interventions are included in the timeline; for a more comprehensive catalogue of interventions that aim to reduce the spread of and improve health outcomes related to COVID-19 in Canada, refer to the Canadian Data Set of COVID-19 Interventions.

The first COVID-19 case in Canada was reported on January 25, 2020.
Case counts are included for context only and do not reflect the actual infection rate. Case counts that are small may not appear on the graph but can be seen by scrolling over the time window; they can also be found on the case count tab in the downloadable Excel version.
Case counts include only people who received a test. Many people who contracted COVID-19 were not tested and are not reflected in the weekly case counts.
Availability, eligibility criteria and the number of tests differ among provinces and territories, and also affect case counts.
How cases were defined changed in some provinces and territories, resulting in a sudden change in case counts.
Most public health interventions take time to impact infection rates. Changes in testing and case definition can impact case counts quickly. Interventions implemented across provinces and territories differ in scale and timing. The definitions of interventions and services (e.g., essential services) affected are also not consistent. More details can be found in the Canadian Data Set of COVID-19 Interventions (linked below).
More information on the intervention data collection methods can be found in the Notes to readers section in the Canadian Data Set of COVID-19 Interventions (XLSX).
can be downloaded from the Government of Canada's ��ϱ�-Infobase.
In June 2022, ��ϱ�-Infobase changed from daily to weekly updates for cases to reflect current reporting by the provinces and territories. ��ϱ�-Infobase presents weekly case counts reported every Saturday, which are a sum of the total daily case counts from the previous 7 days (Sunday to Friday). Our timeline displays the weekly case count value on each day of the week.