Photo courtesy of Amanda Peace

By Liam Verster

Safe Halloween practices

Grande Prairie woman encourages people to be COVID safe with trick-or-treaters

Oct 25, 2020 | 6:00 AM

A woman from Grande Prairie has launched a Facebook group to raise awareness of safe Halloween practices, and encourage people to be safe when handing out candies to trick-or-treaters this year.

Amanda Peace started the A Cautious Halloween in Grande Prairie Facebook group, and says she was inspired to do so because she works in health care and often deals with the immunocompromised.

“So I visited a lot of families that had vulnerable, immunocompromised people living with them,” says Peace. “So when the idea of Halloween came up, I saw Alberta Health put out some suggestions of practices to make Halloween safer, and I just thought to myself ‘How do we know which homes are practicing these precautions?'”

She adds that this idea is also personal to her and her family.

“This year I was pregnant, and I myself came down with gestational diabetes, and my doctor told me to be extra careful because those are two comorbidities that you have to watch out for in regards to COVID, and then I live with an immunocompromised child as well, so it’s important for us that we go [trick-or-treating].

“She’s two years old and doesn’t really understand, so if we went to a regular house and knock on the door and somebody just threw candy, I mean she just puts everything in her mouth still, so I just wanted to do our best so we could visit homes as safely as we can, but still get to participate in the fun.”

Peace’s group, which already has over 120 members, asks people to follow some guidelines for handing out candy to the super heros, princesses, zombies, and other trick-or-treaters.

“I think the best options out there are wearing a mask and using tongs, gloves tend to be misused, you touch your face and don’t think about it, but with tongs you’re completely avoiding that contact.”

She adds that other ideas, like candy chutes, are great ideas, but asks people to ensure they are sanitizing their hands between each visit from costumed kiddies.

Peace is compiling a list of those who are willing to take these measures on Halloween, to make sure that those who are more at risk can still visit houses and have a safe trick-or-treating experience.

“Ideally I would love 30 people per subdivision, because this time of year, the roads are bad, you don’t really want to be driving around town to have to go to these houses. So a goal of mine is to have many more homes to visit.”

Peace says that list will be shared with families in the Facebook group, and adds that if anyone already on the list becomes sick before Halloween to message her, so they can be removed and the children and families won’t be put at risk by visiting them while trick-or-treating.