The administration of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is struggling to keep up with the demands of the coronavirus pandemic after the computer system for managing unemployment claims crashed on Tuesday.
The Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (DLEO) posted an alert on Twitter acknowledging the failure of the Unemployment Insurance Agency.
“At this time, the MiWAM online unemployment system is not available,” DLEO wrote Tuesday morning. “Technical teams are working resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”
MLive reported:
There have been numerous reports over the past two weeks that the system has been very slow and almost impossible to access, the result of a huge jump in laid-off workers as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Michigan had 129,298 new unemployment claims filed for the week ending March 21, up from 5,338 filed the week prior.
The state Unemployment Insurance Agency created a schedule for residents to file claims by the last name’s first letter, but that didn’t seem to alleviate the problem.
On Monday, Whitmer reversed a warning to doctors and pharmacists about over-prescribing chloroquine, the drug recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fight the coronavirus.
The Metro Times reported:
Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, a Clarklake Republican, told The Detroit News that he asked the governor to issue the original letter to prevent people from hoarding the drugs and thus depriving non-coronavirus patients of their medicine.
“We needed something to prevent cloroquine from becoming the next toilet paper,” he told (paper editor and publisher Gary) Miles. “I quickly requested of her staff that they put something out, and somehow in the translation it was prohibiting use of these drugs — and that wasn’t the intent.”
“We want to ensure that doctors have the ability to prescribe these medicines,” Whitmer said Monday. “We also want to make sure that the people who have prescriptions that predated COVID-19 have access to the medication they need. And so all of the work that we’ve done is trying to strike that balance.”
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter and like him on Facebook.