The article considers institutional responses to the challenges created by COVID-19 pandemic. The comparison of discrete structural alternatives is one of the most important principles of institutional analysis. It means that policymakers and researchers rely on a countable set of legal options in the course of comparison of different institutions designed to solve one or another problem. COVID-19 pandemic provoked the elaboration of “intermediate” normative solutions, thus changing the legal framework and leading to the formation of the short-term “institutional continuum” instead of the established spectrum of alternatives.