Contactless, touch-free, and hands-free are the new buzz words these days, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hygiene Hazard
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a renewed focus on the hygiene hazard of commonly touched surfaces at public venues. Although we will not be infected just by touching these commonly touched infected surfaces if we then touch our eyes, mouth, nose, or the food we eat with our infected fingers we could be infected by COVID-19.
It is why KFC has suspended its “Finger Licking Good” slogan. Licking your fingers is not a good idea during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Have you ever thought about how many things or surfaces you have to touch when you go to public venues like supermarkets, shopping malls, libraries, public toilets, train stations, on a train or a public bus, etc. and hope that they could be contactless, touch-free or hands-free?
Entrance Door
Automatic sensing entrance doors are already a norm at public venues, which is good. Even more so for health and hygiene reasons, toilet entrance should have automatic sensing entrance doors or be “doorless” as a norm.
Concern about privacy?
Innovative building designers should be able to configure the toilet entrance to protect user privacy and eliminate the door at the same time. Prominent signage can help to avoid the embarrassment of walking into the wrong toilet.
Hope we will see more smart solutions for “doorless” toilets.
Any door at public venues that serves no real purpose or benefit should be removed altogether. It eliminates any need to touch any part of the door.
Lift Button
A Bangkok shopping centre was quick to replace lift buttons by foot pedals to avoid the spread of COVID-19. No touching of any lift button.
However, replacing lift buttons by foot pedals is not common. It may be due to unfavourable factors such as feasibility, cost of modification, maintenance implications, etc.
Major lift companies have started to offer remote calling of lift solutions using smartphone Apps to avoid touching of lift buttons. We will see more touchless solutions soon.
Pedestrian Traffic Light Button
Pedestrian traffic light button? A simple, low-cost, and easy-to-implement solution is to put up a sign to use the elbow to press the button. Not exactly a touchless solution but it is a good quick-fix solution.
Hands-Free Public Toilet?
COVID-19 had prompted a focus on hand hygiene. Wash your hands often. However, hand washing can become useless if people touch unclean surfaces right after washing their hands.
While bathrooms may have soap and paper towels for handwashing, they often lack the facilities for people to avoid re-contaminating their hands by touching the taps, soap dispensers, and the door handles.
They should all go hands-free.
Currently, most toilets have a hands-free hand dryer. Why not hands-free water tap, hands-free soap dispensing, hands-free paper towel dispensing, hands-free urinal flushing, and hands-free toilet flushing?
A proximity sensor is what is needed to make these accessories hands-free.
Hands-free toilets should be the hygiene standards for the future.
Expect strong demand for proximity sensors for hands-free solutions to fight COVID-19.
Public Touchscreen
Public touchscreens such as ATM pin pads, point-of-sale terminals, and keyboards serve to reduce face-to-face interactions of staff and customers and improve efficiency.
However, the touchscreens and buttons could spread COVID-19 if they are not frequently cleaned and disinfected. There are new antiviral spray-on coatings that could provide up to 90 days of protection on touchscreens and other commonly touched surfaces.
Don’t trust these antiviral coatings or don’t trust that adequate clean and disinfection is maintained? You can buy hook shape keychain made of brass material to push the open door, push the button and keypad, turn the handle and lever, and use as a stylus to tap touchscreens or sign against tablets. Brass material is known to be anti-microbial.
Public Event Hygiene
When large public events start again, we may expect hygiene measures such as disinfection gate at the event entrance, body temperature check stations, mobile hands-free disinfectants, soap and water stations to become the standard hygiene requirements, just like the security requirements.
It is everyone’s wish that the COVID-19 testing technology could be so advance to be able to screen out instantly those who carry the COVID-19 virus and are contagious to keep the rest safe in large public events.
We may see contactless vending machines dispensing face mask, glove, disinfectant, antiviral wipe, antiviral tissue paper, and eye shield at public events to meet COVID-19-safe demand in the pandemic era.
Want to read more COVID-19 related blogs? Click “COVID-19 Living and Life”.