This crisis has brought out the best in business

Empty rooms at the International Hotel Group are being offered to rough sleepers during the crisis. London’s black cabbies have volunteered their help, picking up the homeless and ferrying them to the hotels.

Gary Neville has offered free rooms at his hotels to any NHS staff who need to isolate themselves from their families. The former footballer turned hotelier has also told all employees at his hotels that none of them will be made redundant or forced to take unpaid leave.

Timpson’s, the shoe repairer renowned for its philanthropy to employees, has offered all staff working at the Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester free car parking at its headquarters. A growing number of breweries are helping the NHS by switching production to making alcoholic hand sanitiser.

Scottish brewer, Brewdog, is donating what it produces for free to those who need it most, delivering its first batch of sanitiser to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary’s Intensive Care Unit yesterday. Psychopomp and Circumstance in Bristol, 58 Gin in London, and Verdant Spirits have also all launched their own production efforts.

The country’s big supermarkets chains have stepped up with extraordinary kindness. One by one all the big chains including Asda, the Co-Op, Iceland, M&S and Tesco have set up special shopping times for the elderly, the most vulnerable to infection, and NHS staff who can shop for everything they need while minimising the risk of catching the virus.

Many retailers have restricted purchase of certain types of item like food and cleaning products to stop them being cleared out by irresponsible panic buyers.

Morrisons is looking out for its small suppliers as well, offering to help keep them afloat throughout the crisis. Similarly, Fuller’s has declared that it will be collecting no rent from its pub tenants for the foreseeable future.

Small businesses are playing their part as well. Fruitdesk, the purveyor of fresh fruit, is offering £10 donation boxes to those most hit by the quarantining. Ever box purchased will be matched by them with a delivery of equal value to an elderly or vulnerable person in London. And there are endless stories of local pubs and restaurants, now closed, which have switched to home delivery by takeaway.

It’s not just businesses which have gone into overdrive to help out where they can but thousands of individuals are doing their best to help struggling health services.

Scientists and engineers have flooding the market with new and easy to manufacture designs for ventilators. A master list is being compiled by the Institute of Manufacturing at Cambridge University in an attempt to coordinate efforts.

At the University of Oxford, researcher Matt Jackson has launched the website reportcovid.org. It aims to supplement official attempts to track the disease by encouraging self-reporting by people who suspect they have contracted the virus.

Across the country people are flocking to volunteer groups under the umbrella of Covid-19 Mutual Aid UK, some of which cover entire cities and others a single blocks of flats.

These volunteers are willing to do almost anything: from delivering  vital groceries and medicines to those who have to self-isolate to simple but important tasks such as calling people to stave off loneliness. In an age where loneliness in old age has become a tragically widespread issue hopefully some of the relationships formed will persist when the crisis is gone.

One would be hard-pressed not to know someone who, even if they are not part of a volunteer group, has taken it upon themselves to help those in need. If you want to do your bit but are pressed for time, options still exist. Donating blood is not just quick but would do a world of good at a time when supplies are coming under strain. Why not sign up here?

Those who saw in a few brawls over loo roll the return to a pre-civilised world, “a war of all against all”, and prophesied that we are too selfish nowadays to pull together in the face of a pandemic have proved too pessimistic. As with every crisis throughout history it has brought out the worst in some. Yet most people have risen to the occasion admirably. Civil society is thriving, invigorated by the sense of crisis and a renewed moral purpose to help where possible.

As people pitch in, they will soon discover that good turns have a way of being returned. As I write I am tucking into a Victoria Sponge baked by the elderly neighbour my mother has been shopping for over the past two weeks. Good deeds have never tasted so sweet.