ALPENA – The Unemployment Insurance Agency and Michigan Works! agencies are open for essential services by appointment only in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the local Michigan Works! office said Tuesday.

The Michigan Works! Northeast Consortium Alpena office is experiencing an uptick in people looking into unemployment options after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday ordered all bars, restaurants, theaters, gyms and more closed to all in-house services, spokeswoman Alicia Wallace said..

“Initially, numbers have gone down, but now with the coronavirus, we anticipate more,” she said. “UIA is trying to make everything as easy as possible.”

Wallace said people should keep checking the michigan.gov/uia website for updates. Ideally, people shouldn’t be out, and are encouraged to complete everything online. Wallace said restaurant workers and employers who want to help employees get as much help as possible have been among the most frequent contacts as of Tuesday.

“If somebody needs to come into the office, it’ll be by appointment only – we are limiting social distancing in offices and getting new information by the hour,” she said. “But there have been quite a lot of outages on that website today because they’re trying to update it as fast as they can.”

Michigan Works! resources can be found at MichiganWorks.org or by calling 1-800-285-WORKS.