With the emergence of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, the government had to adhere to unbudgeted public spending, which had a blunt effect on the financial situation of the people on the State. In order to act quickly, the federal government had to make use of its contingency reserves, which were supposed to be circumstantial, and became customary. This article is an exploratory descriptive study, which was submitted for delimitation of the set of research at the Ministry of Health, a public agency with a high impact on the situation experienced during the pandemic. Proposing to explore how public spendings occurred in the payment phase in the years 2018 to 2021, regarding the main expenses incurred in the contingency reserve expense modality, the financial impacts resulting from the pandemic COVID-19 were highlighted. Therefore, the Federal Government's Transparency Portal was the basis for the documentary research. Among the main results, significant amounts were found in spendings on vaccines, medicines, advertising and research. It is concluded that the results point to a use of more than 29.35 billion reais in non-existent spending in the years 2018 and 2019, due to the urgent need to contain the damage caused by the collective situation created by the pandemic.

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