Does Lex have to handle all possible inputs?

We have a lex bot that does 1 thing - tell you hours of a location based on what the user says.

Lex: "what location do you need hours for?"
Customer: "Morris Park"
Lex confirms input and then responds.

Our call flow has 4 other very simple options that we use text-to-speech to respond to (using play prompt). Something like: "Press 2 for information about COVID-19"

We have all this in one get user input block. It looks like every option gets passed to Lex. For option 1, that's fine because it passes one to LEX and it asks the question. But Lex doesn't have anything for 2, 3, 4, or 5. That exchange, pass to Lex, get nothing, return to Connect flow, takes 4-7 seconds.

What's the right way to configure this? I was thinking of having one get user input block for the DTMF options that will pass to another that has Lex.... but that ends up requiring two clicks to get Lex going. Is there a way to auto initiate Lex?

Thanks!