Federal Response to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic caused catastrophic loss of life and damage to the economy. The federal government provided about $4.65 trillion in relief funds for response and recovery efforts. Although the federal emergency expired in May 2023, public health and economic challenges persist. The CARES Act includes a provision for GAO to report regularly on pandemic impacts and the federal response. 

Oversight of this money has resulted in hundreds of recommendations to improve the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and identified a number of lessons from the pandemic.   

Updates to key COVID-19 indicators as of March 2025 include the following areas: 

• Public health. COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations have decreased overall, but public health impacts continued. For example, about 450 deaths were reported in March 2025.  

• Economic conditions. The economy has generally recovered from the downturn, but recovery has slowed somewhat. For example, inflation remained elevated compared with pre-pandemic levels. 

• Relief spending and fraud. The U.S. spent almost all the available COVID-19 relief funding. The full extent of fraud will never be known with certainty, but estimates indicate hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent payments were made. Fraud-related charges were brought against at least 3,205 defendants. Of those, 2,331 defendants were convicted. Extending the statute of limitations for violations in pandemic relief programs would provide more time to investigate fraud. 

GAO’s work on the pandemic has resulted in over 200 products and 484 recommendations to Congress and federal agencies. Over half of these have been closed. This has led to at least $43.9 billion in financial benefits, among other improvements. For example, GAO’s recommendations helped save about $14.8 billion based on program integrity improvements to small business loans. 

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