Child tax credit payments pushed by President Joe Biden to alleviate hardship amid the pandemic had an immediate impact in reducing the number of children facing hunger, according to government data. The Treasury Department announced Friday that the second round of payments of more than $15 billion were paid to families with about 61 million eligible children, 1.6 million more than last month. According to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey released this week, parents reported having less trouble covering the costs of food and other household expenses after receiving their first payment in mid-July. The share of families reporting that they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the past week dropped to the lowest since the pandemic began, falling three percentage points to just 8.4 percent, according to the report. The Covid-19 pandemic forced businesses to shut down and caused a wave of job losses, and while many have been recovered millions of people remain unemployed or underemployed.