“After appearing to level off mid-April, federal spending in response to the coronavirus outbreak surged in the latter half of the month, more than doubling to over $6.4 billion.”
“From February 1 to April 23, federal agencies tagged more than $6.4 billion as being part of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, using the National Interest Action code ‘COVID-19-2020’ or a similar tag, according to data pulled by The Pulse of GovCon, a market intelligence firm.”
“Prior breakdowns showed the government had spent some $300 million by March 22, $2.6 billion by April 2 and $2.9 billion by April 13.”
“While crisis-related research and development were the top spending area as of the last breakdown, the latest data shows a surge in spending on medical and surgical instruments, equipment and supplies, toward which agencies obligated more than $2.3 billion as of April 23.”
“Drugs and biologicals represented the next largest spending area at nearly $1.3 billion. Basic biomedical research and development was the third largest area at $453 million. Financial management support—$359 million—and IT and telecom software maintenance service plans—$300 million—round out the top five.”
“All IT spending categories—such as equipment, system configuration, data entry, telecom services and more—added together total close to $551 million.”
“The Health and Human Services Department continues to be the top spender by far, doling out nearly $4.4 billion as of April 23…” Read the full article here.
Source: Federal Spending on COVID-19 Doubles in Last 10 Days – By Aaron Boyd, April 23, 2020. Nextgov.
