With an unprecedented amount people than ever working from home to help curb the spread of coronavirus, those of us who still have to go into the office are going to want to be as careful as possible.

But one guy has gone a step further – Richard Skrubis, start-up founder from Latvia has made a ‘finger on a stick’ – which, you’ve guessed it, is a fake finger on a stick, meaning he doesn’t have to use the fingerprint scanner at the door of his office.

He even posted a video of himself using the device at his office entrance. In the clip, we can see the fingerprint scanner beeping and showing a green light when he uses it.

He uploaded the clip to Twitter, with the caption: “I made a ‘finger on a stick’, to curb touching my office entrance doors. #FlattenTheCurve.”

The hashtag refers to the concept that we can slow the peak of coronavirus by preventing the spread of the infection – therefore saving lives.

In a follow-up tweet, he explained how he created his new finger. He captioned it: “I used body safe casting silicone and human flesh pigment. Given the short working time of the resin – I managed to find only a very lousy stick.”

He then posted a photo of the hand that he’d coated in silicone to make the finger, explaining that the whole thing only took around an hour and a half to create.

In order to make it, he waited for 30 minutes with the silicone cast on his hand, with the pigment on it.

Of course, lots of people were keen to point out that the creator will still probably have to disinfect the finger as it’s still coming into contact with the scanner. And the scanner is still being touched by other people’s actual fingers…

And for those of you who already had it in your heads that you could use it to unlock your phone – think twice. For most mobile models it doesn’t work.

Until then though, although Richard’s creation is great, washing your hands with soap and water will do the job.