An ambitious turnaround plan at the Oregon Employment Department intended to finally break the logjam of 70,000 unprocessed unemployment claims got off to a shaky start.

The department’s beefed -up staff managed to process about 9,000 claims in its first two weeks, about 30% shy of its goal.

Nevertheless, David Gerstenfeld, the department’s interim director, vowed Wednesday that the department will meet its goal of processing the remaining 60,000 claims by Aug. 8.

“The process is taking longer than we thought,” Gerstenfeld said in a press briefing. “Everything continues to be remarkably challenging.”

It’s been one thing after another for the department this year. It was swamped with unemployment claims after the pandemic caused the economy to tank. More than 243,000 people lost their jobs.

The department’s ancient computer system couldn’t cope. Neither could the phone system, which saw incoming calls soar from about 15,000 in a normal month to 20 million in April.

And now, seven employees have been diagnosed with COVID-19, five of them in the last week, Gerstenfeld said at the Wednesday briefing.

About 60,000 Oregonians have yet to receive any money. This latter category are primarily self-employed Oregonians and gig workers who for the first time were encouraged to apply for the benefits under a new program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, known as PUA.

While the department has managed to process 99% of the 495,600 regular unemployment claims, Gerstenfeld said the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance process proved a more difficult problem. Created by the federal coronavirus relief bill, the pandemic program was aimed at people who are typically excluded from receiving unemployment benefits.

Agency officials said the department had to set up an entirely new, largely manual process for the new program. Despite efforts to streamline and speed up the process, about 60,000 of the 97,000 Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims have not been processed.

Gerstenfeld launched “FOCUS PUA” on June 19 with the express goal being to eliminate the backlog by Aug. 8. His strategy in part was to bring on as many new bodies as possible. The agency went from 355 workers in March to 1,047 now. And Gerstenfeld hopes to hire another 500.

The coronavirus could complicate those expansion plans. Some of those newly hired have complained of cramped quarters that don’t allow for proper social distancing.

Officials said the five new cases are not a classic outbreak with workers in close proximity spreading the virus among themselves. The five all worked in separate buildings, said agency spokeswoman Ariane LeChevallier.

During the first week, the department processed 4,368 Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims. It’s goal was 5,000. In the second, staffers managed to process 4,630, well short of the 7,500-weekly goal.