Long running Ajax request blocking short Ajax status updates

I have a ASP.NET MVC application running on IIS. I have the following handlers /DoWork (lets say it takes 10 minutes) and /ReportStatus (lets say it takes <1s). DoWork does the work while ReportStatus returns the progress of the work.

I wanted to asynchronously run the /DoWork by running $.ajax request from Javascript on it and then monitor its progress by repeatedly querying the /ReportStatus also through asynchronous $.ajax wrapped in function registered in window.setInterval. However, what I am seeing is that the long running $.ajax on /DoWork blocks all the other queries on /ReportStatus until it the DoWork finishes.

How do I circumvent this? I would guess that this has to do with IIS server setting possibly denying two active requests from one host? Any ideas?

My first idea is to have the /DoWork run the actual work in background asynchronous thread and immediately return. However I would like to know if there are better options as I want to keep the connection open during the /DoWork run.