Business NSW regional manager Andrew Cottrill said the current situation was quite unfathomable but all levels of government were working with peak business bodies to help small, medium and big businesses weather the current crisis.

"[Everyone is trying to] make sure we provide the best possible environment for businesses to survive in during this incredibly challenging time," he said.

"I don't hope to ever see a situation like this again, it's quite devastating on a world scale and I don't think it could be imagined that we could have such an incredible outbreak."

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Things might look dreary now, but a week ago they were looking much worse, said Australian Industry Group's Hume and Riverina regional manager Tim Farrah.

"It's a fluid situation, probably a week ago you would have thought we're going to see some massive job losses, closures and company stand-downs," he said.

"Whereas now you're probably thinking it might not be as bad as we first thought. It really depends on how well all these [distancing] measures put into place at the moment work..."

The time we're living through now, is truly unprecedented, especially in the modern globally linked world.

"It's almost going back to days of WWII with rationing and those sort of things, it's really incredible," Mr Farrah said.

"In the midst of seeing some crazy behaviour in supermarkets, we're also starting to see some incredibly cooperative behaviour with people looking at the big picture and working together so at the end of the day we all come out of this as best we can."

Despite some silver linings, job losses, business closures and the economy plummeting into a recession seems inevitable.

Mr Farrah said with social isolation in full swing and government recommendations only getting more restrictive, businesses may have to shut their doors, whether they want to or not.

"Certainly small businesses will be more greatly impacted, especially cafes and small shops because they don't generally have a lot of capacity to close the doors for three to four months and still pay rent," Mr Farrah said.

"There's going to have to be some casualties but at this point in time it's looking better than what it did maybe a week ago."

Mr Farrah said it looked like Australia slipping into a recession was inevitable.

"[Recession] was looking likely even before the coronavirus, the economy had really softened," he said.

"You'd think this would only increase the possibility of that happening."

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Mr Farrah said the Border economy was relatively stable given a lot of people were employed through the public sector in health, defence or the education sector, so would fair relatively well during a recession.

However, the cancellation of event after event has particularity devastated areas and business affected by smoke, low visitation and bushfires this summer.

For them, this latest blow has been an absolute gut punch, Mr Cottrill said.

"We've had this ongoing drought that flowed into a lack of business confidence and consumer sentiment," he said.

"We were already in a bit of a cash drought and then the bushfires hit.

"We were just starting to emerge out the other side of that...there were probably 20 to 30 regional events planned aimed at getting those economies back on their feet. Now, all those events have been cancelled."

Casual workers and those looking to retire would be among those hardest hit by the economic downturn.

"Self-funded retirees will genuinely be struggling through this and having to accept they have potentially lost a significant amount of their investment," Mr Cottrill said. "But we know the markets will bounce back."

Mr Farrah agrees that for people looking to retire now "it's going to hurt", but in three or four years the market should have recovered.

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