Took them 3 months to realize:

"In an email sent Monday to Special Issuance Agency employees, Assistant Director Sandra LaBarge said State Department now considers passport issuance an “essential function of the mission,” and told employees their positions were now mission-critical. The guidance doesn’t apply to contractors."

Finally some good news:

"Risch said the current backlog of 1.7 million applications amounts to a “slight increase” compared to what the agency would handle in a month. The bureau, he added, can scale up operations to process several hundred thousand applications per week."

Source: Fed News Network

- 18 million issued passports / year, 1.5 million / month
- Backlog 1.7 million applications
- Additional 9000 new applications / day, 180000 / month, or roughly 12% of the monthly workload at normal times

They have nearly 10% of their yearly workload sitting in the storage, getting 180k new applications a month while 50% employees are at work and call that a "slight increase in workload".