Soap operas back in production for some reason

I haven't watched a soap opera in decades. They say they're going to go back into production and they're talking about the precautions they'll take. Something about sex dolls.

Cracked.com reports that "sex scenes will also require a little creative finesse. Actors' spouses will act as stand-ins for sex scene scenes that require physical contact. In some cases, blow-up dolls will be used. Maybe there's a way to handle this elegantly..."
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You can look at old soap opera episodes from the '50's on YouTube. In the old days, they seemed to have only two actors per scene. They'd talk and talk and talk. Then maybe someone else would come in and they'd trade off.

I noticed this watching old episodes of Dark Shadows from the '60's. I assumed it was easier on the writers to write thirty pages of dialog a day this way, but then I watched a couple of minutes of a more recent soap opera and was surprised to find that every scene was a crowd scene.

They could do it the way they filmed old episodes of Dragnet. In the '50's, they developed what came to be known as "Dragnet editing". There were no reaction shots---just close-ups of whoever was speaking.

Here's a video of Leonard Nimoy describing it. They would film the opening shot---the actors walk in and take their places---then they would shoot the final shot which was the same shot but with the actors walking out. Then they would film the middle part---each actor in close-up reading their lines from a teleprompter.

They didn't do all the scenes that way but that made an impression on Nimoy. Seems pretty safe pandemic-wise.