The wave of unemployment across the Washington region continues, a month into the coronavirus pandemic. The historic number of people applying for benefits is testing local governments’ ability to accept applications and pay new benefits in a timely manner.

New data released by the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday shows that an additional 6.6 million people across the country filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total to more than 17 million over the past month. That’s a historic high, and could hint at an unemployment rate approaching 15 percent by the end of the month. In March, before the pandemic swept across the U.S. forced a virtual shutdown of the economy, unemployment stood at 4.4 percent.

The flood of claims has been evident across the Washington region. Since the middle of March, claims have drastically outpaced filings for the previous year.

In Maryland, 107,408 more people applied for benefits last week alone, totaling some 234,000 applications since March 15. That’s more than the number of people who filed for benefits in all of 2019.

Virginia saw 149,758 new claims last week, bringing the total number of people who have filed since mid-March to 313,000. There were 134,957 in the commonwealth in all of 2019.

And D.C. is no different: It added 15,393 new claims last week. As of Wednesday, that brought D.C.’s total to 56,609 claims—far above the 37,720 filed in 2019.

The massive spike in claims has resulted in long waits and problems filing claims in both D.C. and Maryland. In D.C., officials said on Wednesday they had already made more than 18,000 payments worth about $6.7 million, but conceded that the crush of calls and online filings continued to pose a challenge. They said 100 new people will start processing claims on Monday to speed payment of benefits.

“It’s probably the number one issue I am getting emails about,” said D.C. Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen during a phone call with city officials on Wednesday.

In Maryland, the state’s Department of Labor said it had implemented a workaround to address “technical issues that caused [people] to miss the window to file their weekly requests for benefit payment.”

Virginia officials said people filing for unemployment benefits could start seeing $600 in additional payments from the federal recovery bill as soon as next week. But that extra money may not come to D.C. and Maryland workers for another few weeks because of technical issues in updating antiquated unemployment systems.

This federal money is supposed to supplement current benefits paid out by the states, which top out at $444 a week in D.C., $430 in Maryland and $378 in Virginia.

The large number of people losing their jobs could also pose a challenge to the pools of money each state has set aside to pay out unemployment benefits. Speaking earlier this week, D.C. Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt said the city’s unemployment insurance trust fund could pay out claims through 2021—though it could face unexpected challenges if the unemployment rate rises above 17 percent.

This story originally appeared at WAMU.