How custodians in Durham Public Schools were granted paid emergency leave

Medical students have found creative ways to pitch in during the Coronavirus pandemic when they are not yet certified to work with patients. Students across the country are organizing to help out by doing things like offering childcare for medical workers and sourcing personal protective equipment from a range of businesses. The students themselves say that they are happy to do "anything we can do to relieve burden on the real heroes.”

With a massive shortage of protective gear in the medical community amidst the coronavirus outbreak, volunteer groups are filling the gap by crowdsourcing masks, gowns, and other essential items. Though the government is working on a longer-term fix to the supply shortage, these volunteer groups are able to pick up hand-sewn masks and other donated items from community members and deliver them to medical centers around the country.

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.

As hospitals are forced to reuse protective masks during the coronavirus pandemic, researchers at the University of Nebraska are finding ways to decontaminate the masks, including with ultraviolet light.

To prevent the transmission of coronavirus to medical professionals and other patients, a hospital in Seoul has started using a make-shift phone booth approach to administering tests. Within seven minutes, doctors are able to communicate with the patient, conduct the test from within an air-tight booth, and then disinfect the booth, all of which have significantly improved the hospital's efficiency of administering the test.

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.

To limit exposure during coronavirus testing, South Korea began piloting drive-thru test sites that allow those being tested to remain in their cars. The drive-thru, which sends results to the patient via text message three days later, has tested nearly 400 people in one day, helping to ease pressure oncovi other testing sites.

Health care workers at the University of Washington are now able to get tested for coronavirus via a drive-through. Providing both convenience and safety by limiting exposure of the potentially ill, the test only takes five minutes and those tested usually get their results within a day.