Ticket to ride: Officials, riders debate the safety of riding the RTA during the pandemic

France is transporting patients from areas with high concentrations of coronavirus victims to areas where hospitals have vacant beds and ventilators. This helps to relieve some pressure on some of the hardest-hit regions.

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.

As communities work to contain the coronavirus outbreak, the risk for emergency responders to contract the illness is high; but in Massachusetts, departments are putting new practices and plans into place to address this. From changing the way police respond to calls, to creating a backfill system if or when officers are quarantined, the departments are working to keep both their responders and their communities healthy.

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.

As hospitals and healthcare workers face a shortage of protective gear in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, an army of independent craftspeople have stepped up. Around the United States, they are sewing protective masks by hand, and they are making an impact. For people who are stuck at home or out of work, this is a way they can contribute, and many hospitals have begun relying on these DIY masks that are already saving lives.

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.

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.