Necessity is the mother of invention.

The silver lining of the COVID-19 cloud may be innovation. From healthcare to retail, people and companies have been identifying problems and finding ways to solve them:

• How much toilet paper is enough toilet paper? As consumers cleared shelves of toilet paper, a company in Germany developed a toilet paper calculator to help determine how much is enough. “A person with a stockpile of 10 rolls, who uses the typical amount of paper three times a day, should survive for 53 days…39 days longer than the recommended 14-day quarantine for those with symptoms,” reported Reuters.

• Ingenious respirator solutions. Early in the crisis a dearth of respirators handicapped healthcare workers’ ability to support patients with serious cases of COVID-19. Many companies developed alternatives. One company, “…built a simple but effective ventilator from a windshield wiper motor and a pliable [hand-operated resuscitator],” reported Eric Haseltine in Psychology Today.

• Where’s Waldo’s fever? An artificial intelligence firm that creates tools to detect threats of violence revamped its analytics software so thermal cameras can measure the temperature of a person’s forehead and send out an alarm when a fever is detected.

• Gear ‘Q’ would have loved. A California company held a month-long contest, asking participants to suggest practical devices for a COVID-19 world. Entries “…poured in, including a wrist-mounted disinfectant sprayer, half gloves for knuckle-pushing of buttons and a device that lets you open car doors without touching the handle, aimed at cab users,” reported Reuters.