All these 3rd party duffers that HP has employed have absolutely no idea how to solve touchpad issues, especially the one where it becomes unresponsive after sleep. They will keep BSing about bios update and driver reinstallations and other absolutely useless advise.
The solution that has worked for me is to:
1. uninstall the touchpad drivers thru device manager (under 'mice and other pointing devices' & 'Human Interface Devices' as well as 'System devices'). DO NOT RESTART YOUR PC at this point.
2. Download and install the Lenovo Synaptics ThinkPad UltraNav Driver called hvg226ww dot exe. The latest version is 19.3.4.228 (June 2021) and can be found on lenovo's support website (a google search should ideally take you there).
3. Now restart your pc (there will be a prompt to do so at the end of installation anyways)
4. Open device manager, under 'Human Interface Devices' find the synaptics touchpad entry, right click and select uninstall device.
The touchpad should start working right away (including all the gestures).