SALEM — The number of Oregonians applying for help because they can’t afford food has exploded more than 40-fold since the pandemic began.

During normal times, about 1,300 Oregonians a month filed applications for food stamps. The state’s assistance program interviewed new applicants either the day they applied or the next.

When that number spiked to 13,000 applications a week, turnaround times multiplied as well.

Before mid-March, the federal food assistance programs in Oregon — Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Aid for Needy Families — had some of the lowest enrollment the state had ever seen.

That changed nearly overnight.

During the most intense weeks, office assistants, managers and anyone else in self-sufficiency programs at the Department for Human Services were redeployed to process applications. New applicants sometimes waited 10 to 12 days before someone could get to their case and issue them an Oregon Trail card to make purchases.

Across the state, layoffs and business closures have caused thousands of people to turn to safety net programs. The state’s Medicaid system has seen the largest spike in cases since the Affordable Care Act expanded who is eligible to enroll in 2014.

Federal waivers that allow Oregon food and health systems to bypass some of the usual vetting procedures for new applications have helped officials adjust more quickly to the suddenness of the increased caseload — avoiding the problems that have plagued the unemployment insurance system.

For the food assistance programs, people already receiving benefits are automatically renewed without needing to go through a requisite interview, saving precious time for state workers to keep adding new enrollees.

The pressure to enroll new enrollees has lifted in recent weeks as new cases slowed to about 8,200 a week, and most people who have suddenly found themselves without a way to feed themselves or their family can expect to receive a food assistance card within four days.

“These are unprecedented times for families and people find themselves in situations they never thought they’d find themselves in,” Haun said. “We want people to know we’re a resource for them during this time.”

But the next crisis could come during budget setting.

The Oregon Health Plan also relies on the general fund to supplement federal dollars. State dollars are finite and can pit health systems against each other for a share of the pot.

Right now, the Medicaid program is boosted by a $6.2 million allotment from the federal government for the pandemic. Depending on how patients qualify, the federal government covers 60% to 90% of their health care costs.

But thousands more people have signed up for public health care and thousands more are staying on when they might have been dropped. That could become a significant strain on state coffers.

March saw 43% more new enrollees to the Oregon Health Plan than the previous two months, on average, according to Medicaid data.

At the end of each year, thousands of people rush to enroll in the Oregon Health Plan during the period to sign up for private insurance plans. Even though Oregonians can sign up for Medicaid at any time, new applications normally drop in the spring and summer.

But this March, enrollments shot up out of season and exceeded the usual busy period by about 27,000 people per month.

Like the food assistance programs, the Oregon Health Plan office has also relaxed rules for staying enrolled.

Usually, 10,000 to 20,000 people are dropped a month for failure prove their income is still low enough. To make sure everyone is covered and also reduce the amount of paperwork on staff, no one is getting dropped now.

Lori Coyner, state Medicaid director, said she expects many more people to enter the rolls during the rest of the year. Coyner braced for a bigger increase, and while recent enrollment numbers are certainly out of the range of normal, she said it appears either that many people are waiting to sign up for the Oregon Health Plan until they need medical care that or people view their loss of health benefits as temporary.

The same is true across the country, generally, Coyner has found in her check-in calls with other Medicaid heads.

“We’re still watching and trying to assess what it’s going to look like in three, six, nine, 12 months,” Coyner said.

Those months could tax the Medicaid system in unprecedented ways if the economy enters a deep recession.

“I will say this: Medicaid enrollment is tied closely to the economy,” Coyner said. “When unemployment goes up, we tend to have an increase in Medicaid.”

For food assistance programs, Haun already suspects what is to come. During the Great Recession, people in rural and coastal communities stayed on food benefits much longer than other parts of the state.

Even if most people who were laid off during the pandemic shutdowns are hired back, he said there is usually a lag time before they can get off of safety net benefits while they get their lives and finances back in order.

While self-sufficiency offices might not need all hands on deck to process applications anymore, Haun has shelved the conversations they were having before March.

“We were talking about what programs can we grow and now we’re back talking about how can you focus on that safety net and ensuring those basic needs,” Haun said.

The supplemental food assistance program, sometimes called food stamps, is fully funded by the federal government, so it should be fine for the time being. But the temporary family assistance program that provides needy households with cash to spend on clothing, rent and utilities relies in part on state funds and parts of the program are sometimes on the chopping block during tight times.

In years past, lawmakers have discussed cutting families off of the cash benefits after 60 months to preserve general funds, rather than the current practice of ending the payments just for parents after five years while keeping benefits for the children.

The program also offers case management, job help and other benefits that aren’t cash. Cuts to the job aid were proposed during a cost-saving exercise the governor asked state departments to do this month.

Haun said he hasn’t seen bigger trims proposed yet.

There is not much left to slash off these programs. Food assistance programs have had their payouts slowly whittled away over decades. Under federal COVID-19 rules, food assistance benefits have been maximized to $194 per person, but once that pandemic bump is lifted, a single person might only receive $20 a month, depending on their income and other factors.

Senate Human Services Chair Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, said that any decision the Oregon Legislature makes about what to cut and what to keep will be a painful choice between economic and health impacts.

“I think it’s irresponsible for me or any public officials to tell people that things are going to be OK and their program is not going to be affected,” Gelser said. “It’s just not possible.”

But she wants to make sure the people who must continue to stay home because of age or underlying conditions are taken care of as much as small businesses owners are. While business groups rally to delay taxes that were slated to go into effect this year, that would mean less revenue coming in, forcing lawmakers to decide how much to spend floating social service programs that have never recovered from sharp cuts that started in 2002, she said.

She is inundated with emails and calls from constituents that need help right now. And she said the people who will be going back to work first are also the people working the lowest wage jobs and will continue to need help paying for food and medical care.

“We’re really going to have to be thinking of those things in terms of budget and policy as we move forward if we want Oregon to recover and we want an economy that doesn’t build itself on health and social inequities based on class and race,” she said.

This article was originally published by the The Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving heath issue.