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COVID-19. GAO recommendations can help federal agencies better prepare for future public health emergencies
COVID-19. GAO recommendations can help federal agencies better prepare for future public health emergencies
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Alternate Title(s):
- GAO recommendations can help federal agencies better prepare for future public health emergencies
- Contributor(s):
- United States. Government Accountability Office, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : United States Government Accountability Office, July 2023
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Civil Defense -- legislation & jurisprudence
COVID-19
Government Regulation
Legislation, Medical
Public Health Administration -- legislation & jurisprudence
United States Government Agencies
United States - Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented effect on the nation’s public health and economy. As of the week ending May 13, 2023, the U.S. had more than 1.1 million reported deaths attributed to COVID-19. Since March 2020, the CARES Act and five additional laws (COVID-19 relief laws) provided substantial federal funds (COVID-19 relief funding)-over $4.6 trillion as of April 30, 20233 -to help the nation respond to and recover from the pandemic. This COVID-19 pandemic response included a focus on mitigating COVID-19 health risks by making vaccines widely available to the U.S. population and expanding access to testing. As of May 10, 2023, about 70 percent of the eligible U.S. population-about 230 million individuals aged 5 and older-had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Additionally, the COVID-19 relief laws appropriated and agencies administered emergency federal assistance to support individuals and public and private entities, including local public health systems and private sector businesses. For example, between March 2020 and March 2022, the Small Business Administration (SBA) made or guaranteed more than 16 million loans and grants through the Paycheck Protection Program and the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. These programs provided about $1.1 trillion in emergency funding to help small businesses. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) terminated the federal public health emergency for COVID-19 on May 11, 2023. However, the nation is still recovering from the public health and economic effects of the pandemic and needs to be better prepared for future emergencies. In our body of work on COVID-19 oversight, we have made 386 recommendations to federal agencies and raised 19 matters for congressional consideration. The intent of these recommendations were for agencies to implement midcourse corrections where appropriate and to increase transparency and accountability of the federal COVID-19 response and for future emergencies. As of April 30, 2023, agencies had fully addressed 134 of these 386 recommendations and partially addressed 48. Of the 19 matters we raised to Congress, Congress had fully addressed two. The 386 recommendations include several we have made since April 2022 (the date of our last comprehensive report on COVID-19 oversight) that could help better prepare agencies for future emergencies. For example, we made the following recommendations that relate to two areas we added to our High Risk List in 2022, (1) HHS leadership and coordination of public health emergencies and (2) the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system: (1) HHS should prioritize the development of the public health situational awareness and bio-surveillance network-an interoperable network of systems to facilitate sharing data and information to enhance early detection of and rapid response to potentially catastrophic infectious disease outbreaks and other public health emergencies-to include designating a lead office for implementing it and clearly defining roles and responsibilities. (2) The Department of Labor (DOL) should develop and implement an antifraud strategy for UI programs that is consistent with leading practices from GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework. The CARES Act includes a provision for GAO to report regularly on the public health and economic effects of the pandemic and the federal response. We have issued 10 comprehensive reports examining the federal government’s continued efforts to respond to, and recover from, the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we have issued over 200 standalone reports, testimonies, and science and technology spotlights focused on different aspects of the pandemic. This report includes several key data updates and five enclosures that summarize and highlight standalone reports issued from April 2022 (the date of our last comprehensive report) through April 2023 on the following topics: public health preparedness, improper payments and fraud, vulnerable populations, distribution of federal COVID-19 funding, and COVID-19 and the economy. This report is based on work we previously conducted in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards or our quality assurance framework. More detailed information on our scope and methodology can be found in the reports cited in the enclosures.
- Copyright:
- The National Library of Medicine believes this item to be in the public domain. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (38 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918681587106676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918681587106676