Covid 19 has devastated the economy so perhaps in the interest of assisting in the mitigation of any similar reoccurrence, it might be prudent to consider minimising the the need to touch items to get them to function. This has been underway for quite some time where, for example, in heavily trafficked areas such as airports, faucets are electronically controlled. Maybe now is the time to regulate. I have been involved with design of licensed premises such as hotels and pubs for over 30 years. Budgets are often loosened for aesthetics and tightened for the functional side. Rarely would a design for automatic taps get client approval although it would do if they were mandatory. How daft is it to go to the expense of such items and then require a visitor to the toilets to pull a door handle to effect an exit?
it is good to see automatic operation of lighting becoming commonplace, probably due to building regulation requirements but I am sure that there are many other things that we could do to reduce the need to touch things to get them to work.
