Most of what spreads between people in a shared building does not travel through the air. It travels on surfaces — touched by one person, touched by the next, and carried to a face without anyone noticing.
Those surfaces are a small fraction of the total area in a facility, and they are touched a disproportionate number of times a day. Which is why disinfection, done properly and in the right places, delivers more health benefit per rupee than almost anything else in a cleaning scope.
What counts as a high-touch surface
Not everything needs disinfecting. A wall, a window ledge or the middle of a floor is rarely touched by anyone. The surfaces that matter are the ones a large number of hands reach for every day:
- Door handles, push plates and railings
- Lift buttons and call panels
- Light switches and access control readers
- Shared desks, hot desks and meeting room tables
- Keyboards, mice, phones and touchscreens on shared equipment
- Printer and copier control panels
- Washroom taps, flush handles, cubicle latches and dispenser levers
- Pantry appliance handles, microwave keypads and water dispenser taps
- Reception counters, visitor pens and signing devices
- Staircase handrails and turnstiles
Walk your own building with that list in hand and you will usually find a handful of points that dozens or hundreds of people touch daily — and that are currently getting a quick wipe at best.
Cleaning and disinfecting are not the same step
This is the most common and most consequential mistake.
Cleaning removes visible soil, dust and grease using detergent. Disinfection kills the micro-organisms left behind, using a chemical agent designed for that purpose.
Applying disinfectant to a dirty surface largely wastes it. Organic matter shields organisms and neutralises many disinfectants on contact. The correct sequence is always clean first, then disinfect.
A surface that looks clean and a surface that is disinfected are two different things, achieved by two different steps.
Dwell time is where most disinfection fails
Every disinfectant has a contact time — the period it must remain wet on the surface to actually work. Depending on the product, this ranges from thirty seconds to several minutes.
Spraying a surface and immediately wiping it dry does not disinfect it. It cleans it and wastes the chemical. This single error is, in practice, why a great deal of disinfection work produces no benefit at all.
Getting it right requires trained staff who know the product they are using, its correct dilution, and how long it must stay wet. It is a training issue far more than an equipment issue.
Where it matters most
The case for frequent disinfection is strongest where footfall is high, turnover of people is fast, or the people present are more vulnerable:
- Healthcare and diagnostic facilities — the highest standard, with defined protocols and documented frequencies
- Schools and childcare — high contact between children, rapid transmission, shared equipment
- Offices with shared or hot desks — different person at the same station each day
- Retail and hospitality — continuous public contact with counters, handles and payment devices
- Food handling areas — where surface hygiene is a regulatory as well as a health matter
- Gyms and shared amenity spaces — equipment touched by many people, often with sweat
How often
Frequency should follow footfall, not habit. In a busy office, high-touch points warrant attention at least once during the working day in addition to the daily clean. Washrooms in a high-footfall building need several rounds. A quiet floor with few visitors needs far less.
The practical approach is to map your high-touch points once, assign each a frequency based on actual use, write it into the cleaning scope, and have a supervisor check against it. Disinfection that is not written down and not checked tends not to happen.
What good disinfection looks like
- Approved, appropriate chemicals at the correct dilution — not household products used as a substitute
- Clean first, disinfect second
- Correct dwell time respected before wiping or drying
- Colour-coded cloths so washroom equipment never reaches a pantry surface
- Staff trained on the specific products in use
- A written frequency per area, and supervision against it
Talk to us
Midas Touch Services provides trained disinfection and hygiene services as part of scheduled housekeeping across Mumbai — for offices, healthcare facilities, schools, retail and residential buildings. Get in touch or call us on +91 90291 00700 and we will map your high-touch points and propose a schedule.
