The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a massive surge of uncertainty and has had a wide-ranging impact on health care, population mobility, economic growth and, more generally, global society and the world economy. This has fundamentally changed the international economy and all human activity. Manufacturing companies face a particular challenge as ensuring the continuity of their operations during the pandemic is of great economic and social importance. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, international organizations, state and local authorities have prepared several official documents describing the specifics of the disease, measures to protect against transmission of the virus, as well as recommendations for managing risks in the workplace. There have been reports from consulting firms on the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis on business organizations and research papers presenting results on safer workplaces in healthcare, education and office work. A review of the literature on these studies reveals a lack of research on the real impact of the pandemic on organizational performance. The coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent global crisis caused by COVID-19 have led to dramatic changes in how firms of all sizes and industries should operate. The flexibility and speed with which organizations were required to keep up with change meant they did not follow the recommended systematic, incremental, event-driven scenarios of traditional business continuity plans. Organizations around the world have had to take a number of personal and organizational actions to protect the lives of their employees and other personnel, and to ensure business continuity. Business continuity can be considered, on the one hand, supporting the operational aspects of the organization and maintaining a safe and efficient working environment, and on the other hand, ensuring the financial sustainability of the business, its sustainability of financial performance. One of the biggest challenges for many organizations has been business continuity. They must answer the question of whether the business is capable of operating continuously for at least 12 months and what solutions to choose that will protect the health of their employees and prevent disruptions in the organization. This paper aims to assess the real impacts and shocks associated with COVID-19 related to supply disruptions, production shutdowns and uncertainties. Efforts have been made to test whether COVID-19 is affecting firm performance and to quantify the magnitude of the real effect. Since pandemics and other unforeseen situations may occur again in the future, it is necessary to understand the effect they have on the financial performance of companies, on the ability of companies to continue to operate in the near future. It is also important to understand how future effects and their impact on the decline in the financial performance of the strategy can be determined and predicted, and to identify the role of government and organizations in preventing a negative impact on the financial performance of the strategy. The purpose of this work is a comprehensive study of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the financial and economic performance of companies and business continuity. The theoretical significance of this work is, first, that it complements the growing literature on the impact of COVID-19 on the real economy. Secondly, the best models for analyzing the business continuity of Russian enterprises during a pandemic, identified in this paper, will be useful in the event of pandemic threats other than COVID-19. Finally, algorithms, formulas and financial indicators that serve as tools for assessing the impact of the pandemic will lay the foundation for future analyzes of unforeseen situations or threats that can lead to interruption of the business continuity of enterprises (for example, terrorism, extreme climatic events and others). The practical significance of this work lies in the fact that it shows how to learn how to live, work and evaluate such a situation, as well as prepare for future critical events that raise such issues as COVID-19.