When the Bay Area issued a shelter-in-place order as a response to containing the spread of COVID-19, businesses had to adapt. From a local distillery creating hand sanitizer at cost, to a restaurant offering groceries, to a catering business selling drive-through meals, local businesses have gotten creative to maintain revenue and pay employees.

In an effort to pay employees as COVID19 containment efforts take a toll on businesses, CEOs and corporate management are taking pay cuts, or giving up their pay altogether. Companies like Delta, United, Marriott, Hyatt, Lyft, and Life Time health clubs are all seeing their leadership elect for salary cuts or decreases in order to continue to pay their employees.

As city schools closed in response to the COVID19 pandemic, New York City opened Regional Enrichment Centers for children of essential personnel. With 93 operating sites, they anticipate caring for about 57,000 children, although attendance so far has been low. Certain precautions are being taken, too, like routine wellness checks for participants and employees, on-site nurses, and constant cleaning and disinfecting.

With experience from past regional disasters and supply-chain disruptions, supermarket chain H-E-B faced the coronavirus chaos with calm preparation, ensuring employees and management act quickly to mitigate their losses - and to keep their shoppers healthy. The chain got a head start by asking suppliers in heavily affected areas - like Italy - for tips and tricks, enforcing early-on social distancing rules, and increasing sick leave for employees.

Thousands of people in Wuhan, China are volunteering to buy groceries, get medicine, and take community members to the hospital as a means to help those that need it during the coronavirus outbreak. Although the volunteers do not knowingly transport anyone diagnosed with coronavirus, the drivers wear protective clothing during their drives, which are organized by local neighborhood committees.

To address those that have been specifically impacted by economic crash due to coronavirus and to slow the spread, cities across the United States are enacting comprehensive measures to help. From a halt on all utility shutoffs to releasing inmates who have nearly completed their sentences or are being held pretrial on cash bail, local governments across the nation are looking for ways to address how the pandemic is impacting the most vulnerable.

As restaurants across the nation have been forced to close their doors during the coronavirus pandemic, some are turning to creative means to help account for the loss of revenue. In Philadelphia, restaurants have created a virtual tip jar to encourage patrons to "donate a tip" to a person or business while in San Francisco a restaurant owner has created a Facebook group that helps connect out of work servers with childcare jobs.

Grocery stores across the United States frantically respond to the "panic buying" brought on by fear of the coronavirus quarantine. As Americans rapidly stock up on supplies, grocery stores expand their network of suppliers, working with farmers, restaurant distributors, and others to find creative solutions to the bottleneck problem of keeping food and goods on their shelves.

Europe's generous social policies, such as allowing employees to retain their salaries while taking sick time to care for themselves or family members, may help to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak while also safeguarding the economy. Although the long-term impacts are yet unknown, in the short term, government-provided incentives are helping people and businesses stay afloat.

Milwaukee's nonprofits serving youth are finding new ways to check in and connect with their students as the coronavirus rules out the possibility for in-person afterschool programming. “Social distancing doesn’t mean social disconnection," the director of a community organization said. "We want to encourage youth to stay in touch with each other and with trusted adults."