Hi! Sorry for being MIA for a few days. I got a project dumped on me that I need to focus on for a little bit. But I can still do the weekly update.
We are currently at 1010 for the week for July-December. This includes approved, denied and RFE. For those of you who are asking about the backlog being reduced, the answer is no. The backlog is not being reduced and the times will not decrease as of right now. 286 of those are RFEs. RFEs do not reduce the backlog because those cases still need to be touched again, they are not closed cases. Theres only 714 approvals and denials - which do eliminate a case from the backlog. Since they get about ~850 submissions a week (minus about 30 for the ones that are automatically rejected, leaving us with 820) we would need 820 approvals/denials a week. Even with this increased speed, we don't have that.
So yes, they are working faster. But the backlog is not going down and the times are not reducing. We need more approvals and less RFEs for that to happen.