What GAO Found GAO identified research conducted on communicable diseases in air travel in several areas. For example, research has examined how air moves in aircraft and studied the effect of different airline operations—such as boarding aircraft from back to front—on the risk of disease exposure....
What GAO Found The Restaurant Revitalization Fund was established in March 2021 to support eligible entities suffering revenue losses from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Small Business Administration (SBA) began accepting applications and awarding funds in May 2021. SBA stopped accepting applications in...
What GAO Found The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plays a key role in contact tracing for air travel—the process of identifying and notifying passengers who may have come into contact with a person infected with a communicable disease during a flight. However, several factors affect...
What GAO Found GAO surveyed state election offices and local election jurisdictions about steps they took to prepare for and conduct the 2020 elections during the pandemic. The surveys asked questions on steps and challenges in five areas: absentee/mail voting, in-person voting, election supplies, election...
In 2020 and 2021, IRS and Treasury issued $931 billion in direct payments to individuals to ease financial stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some eligible Americans never received payments. We made recommendations to strengthen Treasury and IRS’s outreach and communications efforts for...
What GAO Found Since 2006, multiple federal laws have mandated that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) take steps to improve the nation's situational awareness of threats related to public health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, HHS was required to establish a...
What GAO Found Twenty-three of 24 major agencies GAO surveyed reported implementing regulatory flexibilities in response to COVID-19. Regulatory flexibilities can include actions that modify regulatory standards, as well as activities that modify their applicability (e.g., through waivers or exemptions)...
What GAO Found Compared to a typical school year, teachers reported that more of their students started the 2020-21 school year behind and made less academic progress, according to GAO's generalizable survey of K-12 public school teachers. Teachers also reported that many students ended the year behind...
What GAO Found When the pandemic began, states faced historic demand and urgency to pay unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, and their experiences implementing the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program varied. According to data reported to the Department of Labor (DOL), most states started...
What GAO Found State officials GAO interviewed in six selected states that varied across characteristics, such as IT modernization, described facing shortages of experienced staff and IT challenges in processing the surge in claims while implementing the CARES Act Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs....
What GAO Found GAO and others have reported that challenges with Unemployment Insurance (UI) administration have affected states' ability to effectively meet the needs of unemployed workers, both historically and during times of economic downturn—such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Reported challenges with...
What GAO Found One option that may be available to those who lose jobs with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) during the COVID-19 pandemic is short-term plans, which can cover certain health expenses. These plans are generally not subject to federal requirements for individual health insurance coverage...
What GAO Found While the pandemic presented obstacles for many students during the 2020-21 school year, GAO's nationwide survey of public K-12 teachers showed that teachers with certain vulnerable student populations were more likely to have students who faced significant obstacles to learning and an...
What GAO Found Starting in March 2020, Congress passed several laws, including the CARES Act, to provide employers with tax relief in response to the economic burden brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Provisions in these laws established the paid sick and family leave credits (leave credits), the Employee...
What GAO Found The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took several actions aimed at increasing the availability of COVID-19 tests in the United States. This included granting emergency use authorizations (EUA) for more than 400 COVID-19 tests and sample collection devices by the end of 2021 (see figure)....
What GAO Found During the 2020-21 school year, students in all grade levels, whether learning in person or virtually, struggled with many obstacles. These ranged from lack of appropriate workspaces and adequate support to competing demands on their time, disengagement, and absences. Such obstacles hindered...
This supplement is a companion to GAO's report entitled, "Pandemic Learning: As Students Struggled to Learn, Teachers Reported Few Strategies as Particularly Helpful to Mitigate Learning Loss," GAO-22-104487, as well as two forthcoming reports on pandemic learning. This supplement provides detailed...
What GAO Found By late March 2022, daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. had fallen substantially since the Omicron-related peak in January 2022. Though COVID-19-associated hospitalizations and deaths have also decreased, the effects of the Omicron variant—and the rising prevalence of its new BA.2 sublineage—underscore...
What GAO Found GAO's analysis of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data in five selected states shows that the number and percentage of services delivered via telehealth and Medicaid beneficiaries receiving them increased exponentially at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March...
What GAO Found The Indian Health Service (IHS) received more than $9 billion in COVID-19 relief funding, an amount 50 percent greater than its fiscal year 2020 total budget authority. These funds have been used to address both immediate and longstanding needs. IHS allocated funds across the IHS system—including...