One City Is Paying Restaurants to Make Meals for Homeless Shelters

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.

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, school districts are trying a number of approaches to ensure students still have access to free breakfasts and lunches even though they are not coming to school. In some cities, bus drivers are bringing meals to different neighborhoods. The federal government is also working to transfer what would be spent on school lunches to families in the form of food stamps.

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.

Schools have closed across the nation to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, but that's left many students without access to meals. To address this, Kanawha County has started to use school buses to transport meals to students, both offering reliable access to meals and eliminating the possibility of spreading the virus by reducing the need for children to stand in lines to receive the meals.

Those over the age of 65 have been instructed to stay at home as much as possible during the coronavirus pandemic, so younger adults are coming together across the nation to help deliver this population essentials. Between Facebook, Nextdoor, and basic spreadsheets, communities are finding ways to provide mutual aid by connecting lower-risk neighbors with their more at-risk neighbors.

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.

To help mitigate the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on some of its most vulnerable populations, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is paying otherwise closed restaurants to make food for short-staffed homeless shelters in the area.

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.

As the coronavirus spreads across the United States, some grocery stores are designating specific shopping hours for older and immunocompromised residents. This allows shoppers to stock up in a less crowded environment and reduces the risk that hey will get infected.

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.