$2.50 an hour and exposure to riders who may have the virus: Uber drivers say their income has collapsed and help has been sparse. Here's how bad it is.

Adam Smith, a driver in Fairfield, CT, used to work for Uber and Lyft part-time, bringing in about $200 per six hour shift.

He has now started working for delivery apps like Grubhub, Doordash, and Postmates, too — between all the apps, he says he makes roughly $100 in six hours.

"The pay for DoorDash is pretty solid and you can 'cherry-pick' the best deliveries," he said. "But we're even more disposable to all of these companies right now."

Chicago resident Michael Sanchez was laid off from his full-time job at Dunkin Donuts in the first week of March as his branch scaled down its operations due to coronavirus.

That week, Sanchez started working as a Lyft driver to make backup income. In the three weeks that followed, he watched his average income as a driver sink from over $100 per day to roughly $40 per day.

"I'm doing at most eight rides per day if I'm lucky," Sanchez said. "It goes up and down, but it's mostly been going down."

Latina Young, an Uber driver in Los Angeles, has been driving for over 5 years and has built up a 4.92-star rating in that time.

Earlier this month, Young had a rider with a persistent cough who joked that "everyone has coronavirus." Within a week, Young herself started experiencing symptoms, and visited a doctor who advised her to self-isolate for two weeks.

In messages back and forth with Uber reviewed by Business Insider, Young attached the letter from her doctor and requested that Uber provide two weeks of sick pay the company had publicly promised. Instead, she received a generic message informing her that her account had been suspended for 14 days without further explanation.

"I have been driving during this crisis suffering with long hours and making less than $500 a week," Young said. "No financial assistance, no explanation."

Young's experience fits a broader pattern described by Uber drivers who have been unable to get sick pay.

Nate, an Uber driver in Las Vegas, told Business Insider that he stopped driving in early March because he has an autoimmune disorder and wants to avoid catching COVID-19 at all costs.

But when he asked Uber to provide two weeks of sick pay, providing a note from his doctor recommending social distancing due to his condition, the company told him that the pay doesn't cover conditions outside of a COVID-19 diagnosis.

"I really thought that due to my disease and the higher risk I have of getting sick, as well as with an official document from my doctor, they would easily listen and help," Nate said. "The whole thing was shady and misleading."

"The saving grace in this is that the government has just extended unemployment benefits to rideshare drivers and gig workers," Nate said.

While the $2 trillion stimulus bill does provide benefits to gig workers for the first time, it's not clear exactly how drivers will access those benefits.

Many states have been rejecting applications filed by gig workers, according to a CNBC report, and the exact amounts drivers will be paid is set to be determined on a state level.

"None of us wants to collect unemployment. We'd rather be working, but we're all currently making about 50% less [than before coronavirus] right now, some even less," Smith said. "And we're on the front lines."