RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina health officials say they are still evaluating the effects of cuts to federal COVID-19 funding announced this week but expect dozens of state employees to lose jobs.

“We are currently working to determine the depth of impact, but we are certain this will result in the loss of more than 80 jobs at the department and more than $100 million in funding that directly contributes to the health, safety and wellbeing of the people we serve,” the agency said in a statement sent to Spectrum News 1 Wednesday.

Federal officials on Tuesday announced they would pull back $11.4 billion sent to state and local public health departments and other health organizations to respond to the COVID pandemic.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement, using the agency’s acronym.

Notices were sent Monday, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects to recover the money within 30 days, the department said. The CDC is a division of Health and Human Services that deals with epidemiology and health threats.

North Carolina's health agency said the federal COVID money went to efforts including immunization projects, disease monitoring and substance use disorder services. The efforts are spread among local health agencies, hospitals and universities.

“The department is putting impacted vendors on notice for them to pause work supported by these funds, until we learn more from the federal government,” the state health agency said.

The move comes just over five years since the first Trump administration declared a national public health emergency over the COVID pandemic in March 2020. That emergency has ended, but the CDC says an average of 458 people across the nation have died of the infection weekly over the past four weeks.

North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services tracked COVID infections in the state from March 2020 to May 2023 and reported 3,501,404 cases, including 29,059 deaths, during that time.