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Lifts experience pretty high human traffic everyday. Lift buttons in particular, are considered high human-touch points.

And amid the Covid-19 outbreak, awareness and concern over hygiene has skyrocketed in the recent months.

New initiative

One group of volunteers has since sought to allay residents' concerns over touching lift buttons.

The group, which calls itself the Volunteer Community Patrol, has been installing boxes of cotton buds in several HDB lifts around Singapore, they shared in a Facebook post.

Here's what the setup looks like in a HDB lift at Dorset Road.

Residents are advised to pick a cotton bud, use it to press the lift buttons, and then discard it into the plastic box below.

The cotton buds, the group stressed, are meant for one-time use only.

The group assured Facebook users that volunteers wore gloves to prevent contamination of the cotton buds during the installation procedure.

The volunteer who posted the images added that he is currently healthy and assured members of the public that he wasn't "jeopardising public health".

Volunteer Community Patrol's Facebook post has since gone viral, garnering over 600 shares.

The group is currently looking for more volunteers to join them, so that they can expand their coverage to more lifts in Singapore.

It is uncertain though, if the cotton bud set-up will be able to stay for long. A Mothership reader told Mothership that the cotton buds in the lift were removed the next day, apparently by cleaners.

Scares in lifts

This initiative comes on the heels of a series of potential public health scares by inconsiderate members of the public.

For example, several teenagers were investigated by the Singapore Police for spitting on lift buttons in Sengkang, Punggol, and Ang Mo Kio.

Not long ago, a woman was caught on camera smearing blood on lift panels and buttons.

However, some of the bad has also been countered by good, as kind Singaporeans utilised lifts as a common space to extend a helping hand.

During a bout of panic buying where commodities like hand sanitisers and masks were running out in-stores, kind residents left these items in HDB lifts for members of the public to use.

Top photo by Emmanuel Goh and Volunteer Community Patrol / FB.