Hello, mate. I have the same thoughts about processing the application. Although there are a lot of messages here that they cannot process your background without biometrics, i still believe they do everything that is possible to do without fingerprints.
I do not know how they use biometrics, maybe they send it to interpol to verify it? If somebody knows this procedure, please, share your knowledge
Anyway, the situation is unusual and i suppose the government has some ideas how to ease our problems