This story about emergency child care was produced as part of the series Critical Condition: The Students the Pandemic Hit Hardest , reported by HuffPost and The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

Tamiesha and Ernest Parris, 36 and 38, met on the job six years ago. Both nurses at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City, they dated in secret for years. Ernest Parris works in the post-operative department and Tamiesha Parris works in the ICU. She described her husband as laid back, and herself as very type-A.

We actually probably couldnt be [more] opposite, but, yin and yang, she said.

Their daughter, Presley, is 4.

Presley used to attend Midwood Montessori School in Brooklyn, but it shut down in mid-March, around the time Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered schools closed to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Presleys last day at Midwood was March 13.

Over the next week, many child care facilities across the city closed their doors, limiting options for parents in essential jobs who still needed the care.

The Parrises were not aware of potential public options when their daughters daycare closed. Amid the sudden upheaval, it was not immediately clear to Presleys parents where they could find an early child care center she could attend. For more than two weeks, the Parrises took turns watching Presley during the day while maintaining a grueling schedule of staggered night shifts, worried all the while that they might contract the virus that was already raging across the city.

At the time, Ernest Parris was working 9 p.m. to 9 a.m.; Tamiesha Parris worked from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. They rotated nights so that one parent was always home with Presley. Ernest Parris works about 13 shifts a month; Tamiesha Parris, who was working seven shifts a month pre-coronavirus, started working around 11 shifts. Child care allows them the time to sleep, go grocery shopping and take care of other errands.

Like the Parris family, parents around the country with essential jobs have been scrambling to find child care centers that are still open during the coronavirus pandemic, or are turning to help from family members who are able to stay home with children. States have set up different parameters for operating child care facilities to serve the children of essential workers, each trying to figure out how to best provide for families, protect the safety of children who need care, and avoid increasing the devastation wrought on an already fragile child care industry.

With emergency child care options varying so much across the country, many parents who work in healthcare do not have access to a government-run child care program for essential workers. And, some programs that are up and running now did not exist when the coronavirus first hit, or are not a good fit for every family.

In an April 2-10 survey of more than 5,000 child care providers across the country, almost half of respondents said their child care center was completely closed, according to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), a membership association of early childhood educators, which conducted the survey. An additional 17 percent of respondents said their centers were closed to everyone except the children of essential personnel. Of the respondents whose child care programs remained open, 85 percent reported they were operating at less than half of their enrollment capacity.

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In March, the NAEYC released guidance on how states could best provide emergency child care. The group advised closing all child care facilities to slow the pandemic as a first step, then systematically reopening them in a highly scripted and coordinated way, much like any other disaster relief situation, said Rhian Evans Allvin, NAEYCs chief executive officer.

That didnt happen in most states, many of which allowed or even encouraged child care businesses to stay open in the first weeks of the public school shut downs. Evans Allvin pointed to Massachusetts and Vermont as states whose practices aligned with NAEYCs recommendations, in part because the states coordinated with preexisting child care centers. NAEYC cautioned states against relaxing licensing rules for child care centers, or setting up provisional child care programs built from scratch, as some states have done.

Theres a better way to do this, said Evans Allvin. Its incumbent upon governors to use the licensed and regulated system that exists.

Policies vary widely from state to state. California closed nearly all of its public schools, but child care centers have been allowed to remain open for the children of essential workers. In Kansas, the state supports the continuity of operations for child care centers and has not ordered any closures. In Maryland, the governor enacted an emergency order to expand access to child care during the pandemic and suspended certain State child care and local regulations.

Some large cities took their own measures to provide emergency child care to front line workers. Seattle, one of the U.S. cities hit earliest by coronavirus, launched an Emergency Child Care program for the children of first responders, healthcare professionals, pharmacy workers and grocery workers.

On March 23, New York City opened Regional Enrichment Centers where children of front line workers in preschool through 12th grade can participate in activities and remote learning in a classroom setting. A maximum of 12 children are allowed in each room, with at least one adult. The city has also collaborated with community organizations to designate Emergency Child Care Centers, which primarily serve children ages 6 weeks to 4 years old and is working with family child care providers who offer services for young children at their homes. As of April 6, all center-based early childhood programs not affiliated with the Department of Educations emergency child care system or a related essential business, like a hospital, were ordered to close.

Related: Desperate parents need help as coronavirus upends our lives

Ivy Lewis is a fifth-year chief resident in the surgery department at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami; her husband, Richard, is a neurology fellow at the hospital. The couple has two children, Teddy, 2, and Lia, 5 months. Teddy used to attend a child care center near one of the hospitals where Ivy Lewis works. When Miami-Dade County announced school closures in mid-March, Teddys child care program shut down. Administrators at the program did not refund March tuition, although they charged only partial tuition in April and May.

Although he was able to work mostly from home, Richard Lewis wasnt able to do so while looking after an infant and a toddler. The nanny who takes care of Lia looked after Teddy as well. The Lewises paid her a higher rate to help take care of two children instead of one.

Financially, its kind of almost a double whammy because were paying for school. Plus, for now, were also paying for a nanny, times two, Ivy Lewis said in late March. Some child care centers were still open, but the Lewises felt safer keeping Teddy at home.

In early June, Ivy Lewis was exposed to a patient who initially tested negative for coronavirus, but became positive over the course of his hospitalization. She tested negative for coronavirus on June 4, but a week later, her husband started to develop body aches and a sore throat. The next day, Lia had a fever, and the day after, Teddy was a little warm and coughed a few times. Richard Lewis got a coronavirus test on June 14 that came back positive the next day. Ivy Lewis got tested again on June 15. She was asymptomatic other than losing her sense of taste and smell, but the test was positive. The hospital where she believes she contracted the virus has had around 28 healthcare workers test positive for coronavirus.

The family immediately quarantined. Their pediatrician advised against taking the children in for a test, and told the Lewises to assume that the kids had the virus.