The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued some guidelines for Halloween festivities, and it looks like you might have a night inside watching “Halloweentown.”
What’s going on:
- The CDC released its first set of guidelines for Halloween and the holidays.
- The guidelines say people should avoid door-to-door trick-or-treating.
- Costume masks and Halloween parties weren’t recommended, either.
- The CDC said: “Many traditional Halloween activities can be high-risk for spreading viruses. There are several safer, alternative ways to participate in Halloween. If you may have COVID-19 or you may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, you should not participate in in-person Halloween festivities and should not give out candy to trick-or-treaters.”
So what can you do?
The CDC released some lower risk and moderate risk activities for you to do if you’re dead set on doing something for Halloween.
- The lower risk activities include:
- Carving pumpkins with people in your home.
- Carving pumpkins with neighbors while keeping social distancing.
- Decorating your home.
- Hosting a virtual Halloween contest.
- Have a Halloween movie night.
- Hold a scavenger hunt with people in your home.
Moderate risk activities include:
- One-way or-treating where you take a goodie bag from a family.
- Have a small outdoor gathering with people socially distant.
- Wear protective masks at an outdoor costume party.
- Walk through a haunted forest with proper masking.
- Visit pumpkin patches or orchards with face mask policies.
- Host an outdoor Halloween movie night.
Higher risk activities were also included on the list. Many of them remind me of a time long gone by — before the pandemic:
- Traditional trick-or-treating.
- Attend a crowded costume party.
- Walk through a haunted house indoors.
- Go on a hayride or tractor ride.
- Use alcohol or drugs.
- Travel to a fall festival not in your community.