SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) -With businesses and restaurants opening back up, COVID-19 may not be on the forefront of everyone's mind; but for food pantries across central Illinois, the virus is still presenting challenges.

The Springfield Salvation Army operates just one of the many food pantries across central Illinois. Captain, Jeff Eddy, says there's still people unemployed and out of jobs, which means people still need food.

"We are relaxing now, and it's not as a scary, but we still live in a scary time," Eddy says.

During the pandemic, Eddy says more people are struggling to find food.

"The food pantry has increased ten fold since all this started," Eddy says. "People that had never asked for food before, found their selves in the place needing to ask for food."

That is why the Salvation Army took away restrictions, opening up their pantry to anyone who needs it.

"There's times when we all need help, so we tried to remove some of the restrictions," Eddy says. "It's not based on income. We took off the restriction of every 30 days "

In order to feed more people, Eddy says it takes help from the entire community.

"Prairie Farms is giving us milk. Central Illinois Food Bank has been wonderful helping us getting out food boxes," Eddy says. "Chick-Fil-A, they donate on an almost daily basis. We get donations from KFC and Hy-Vee."

Even food pantries are sharing supplies with each other. Head Volunteer for St. Martin De Porres Center Food Pantry, Joe Bertolino, says they trade items with the Salvation Army.

"[The Salvation Army] has an incredible amount of donuts they give us," Bertolino says. "We supply them with things for their food pantry ... meat and vegetables. We got a lot of dry food."

Although the Salvation Army says they have seen more traffic at their food pantry since COVID-19, Bertolino says Saint Martin's numbers have actually decreased becasue there is so many places to get food.

"We are in competition with a the mini pantries that have opened up," Bertolino says. "We're down about 2,000 from last month, from April."

Eddy says the Salvation Army will continue to have their food pantry open to everyone until food starts to get low.

Their current hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.