Alabama has about 5,000 small businesses still waiting on Paycheck Protection Program loans, totaling more than $1 billion.

That’s according to Alabama Bankers Association President Scott Latham. Congress yesterday approved another $320 billion for the program, meant to blunt the harm inflicted on small businesses by coronavirus pandemic measures that have put large sectors of the U.S. economy on ice.

Alabama small businesses received about 28,000 loans worth $4.86 billion through the program, which exhausted its funds in less than two weeks. Nationwide, there were a total of 1.6 million loans, with the overall average size of the loans approved on a national level totaling $206,000.

The loans went out at a dizzying speed and volume, dwarfing in days the amount the Small Business Administration usually loans out over the course of a year. Banks like BBVA received hundreds of applications within minutes. Regions, in its quarterly earnings report, said it assisted business customers in securing PPP loans totaling $2.8 billion.

But many small business owners were left without and felt squeezed out, while larger companies have since returned funds they received after criticism. Some of those companies have until May 7 to return the money without scrutiny.

About $60 billion of the new round of money is being directly specifically to smaller lending institutions, to be split evenly between institutions with less than $10 billion in assets, and those between $10 and $50 billion. Latham said the U.S. Treasury Department has mandated that large companies applying for PPP funding must certify the loans are necessary and other funds are not available.

“Our bankers have been working around the clock to serve their customers,” Latham said.