WASHINGTON—The recent lapse of a set of federal surveillance powers has begun to limit the FBI’s ability to pursue some terrorism and espionage suspects, a top Justice Department official said, outlining how the ripple effects of the coronavirus pandemic are being felt across U.S. national security efforts.

The Justice Department has been unable to obtain certain wiretaps and to file requests to obtain business records from companies in connection with national security investigations between five and 10 times since Congress allowed the surveillance provisions to expire last month, said John Demers, the head of the department’s national security division, in an interview.

“The House legislation includes important reforms to FISA and reauthorizes national security tools that we would have used, but have not in the weeks since the law expired,” Mr. Demers said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a decades-old law that has recently endured bipartisan scrutiny..

Focused on addressing the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers left Washington last month without renewing three FISA-enabled intelligence tools, which expired on March 15. The issue was left unresolved in part due to competing factions within both political parties disagreeing over which privacy measures to add to the proposed legislation extending the authorities, as well as inconsistent signals from the Trump administration.

The prospect of a prolonged period without the national security authorities created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has alarmed current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials. They warned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, especially, now lacks a critical tool it uses to access a wide variety of business records deemed relevant to continuing terrorism or espionage investigations.