Just spoke with a friend, who is an FSW Outland applicant with AOR in September 2020, and he got his COPR approved on January 5, very shortly after submitting his biometrics on December 21. He also says that his wait time seems to be mostly due to him not being able to submit biometrics for a long time, because Canadian VAC in his home country reopened only on Dec 21.
This is extremely disrespectful, frustrating and unfair that IRCC has been massively ignoring earlier applications (especially those with AOR in Jan-April) telling COVID-related excuses, while processing the ones that were submitted much later so quickly. The only possible explanation for this is that there was a calculated decision by IRCC management to focus on recent applications, so that they meet their bullshit metrics that have a horizon of 6 months, and so that they are able to say "We've managed to process 95% of applications that we received within the last 6 months" when they report to their leadership. They probably don't even track metrics beyond 6 months, and our applications are irrelevant from the "business perspective". What a shame.