(CNN) Former Vice President Joe Biden called for the federal government to cover half of some workers' salaries to help keep people employed during the coronavirus outbreak.

"If these little guys go out of business, they're out of business. I mean they're not coming back, likely," Biden said of small businesses during a CNN town hall Thursday night on the coronavirus . "So I think we should think about how we deal with the economy in a different way."

"I think we should do a situation like we did in the Recovery Act ," he said, adding that "Employers, if they're able to stay open, instead of ... having to lay off employees -- bring on everybody, keep them working, they may have one person doing 50% of the job, another person doing the other 50%. I think the federal government should just come in and make up the difference in the salaries, just make up the difference to keep people employed."

Biden appeared to be referring to a $5 billion fund set up as a part of the 2009 stimulus that helped subsidize low-income workers. The federal government helped pay for the salaries of some workers in exchange for employers not laying people off.

"Keep people on the payrolls and just have straight flat payment, a flat payment where the government pays half the salary of everybody on there," Biden later added. "You can keep everybody doing half the work they were doing but everybody stays employed."