BATON ROUGE - State officials announced Wednesday that more than $1 billion in state and federal money has been paid out to Louisiana residents since the coronavirus took hold of the state in late March.

According to statistics released by the Louisiana Workforce Commission, about $1,025,775,306.56 in unemployment relief has been paid out to Louisiana residents since March 22. About $275 million of that came directly from the state's unemployment fund.

This is what @LouisianaGov mentioned when I asked about current unemployment numbers. A total of around $1.2 billion has been paid out. Around $275 million of that is from state unemployment fund, the rest is federal $$$ https://t.co/jCKl2GfHjv

— Johnston von Springer (@johnstonvon) May 6, 2020

The state expanded the criteria for unemployment benefits eligibility to include workers who are furloughed, self-employed or work individuals gigs. Last month, the state bottlenecked the application process for unemployment to help handle the overwhelming volume of requests.