Halloween Safety: Local Doctor Advises Families How To Stay Safe During Trick-Or-Treating
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Tomorrow is Halloween and almost 100 communities in the region will be trick-or-treating.
While it's against the advice of some health experts, it's a tradition many families don't want to surrender to the pandemic.
Kids are going to go out with supervision, so conceding that point, Dr. Joe Aracri, the chair of the Pediatric Institute at Allegheny Health Network says the best thing about Halloween is that it's outdoors.
"If you are the person that is giving out candy," he said, "see if you can be creative to do that in a socially distant way, people have been using PVC pipes to shoot it down to the kids, putting it on leavers that they can handle the cases where you're not having direct contact. If you're not able to do that, make sure that you have a mask on, make sure the basket is dry, whenever the children come up to trick or treat. And don't allow the kids to pick out of the bowl hand out the candy, so this way you don't have many hands in the same bowl."
Dr. Aracri recommends only trick-or-treating with family or close friends and wear a mask.
"The mask you should be wearing should be a multiple layer fabric mask, preferably cotton that goes over your nose, mouth, and chin," he explained. "So that's the message you want to be wearing. Now what we are trying to do is avoid having that mask underneath another mask where the kids are having a hard time breathing."
Also, make sure to take along the hand sanitizer.
"So every couple houses are so what you want to do is you know, put a little bit of hand sanitizer in your child's hands, make sure they rub it in real good, keep it dry that's a good way of keeping the kids safe," he said. "It's all about being creative, you can make this into a wonderful event for kids if you just think outside the box, be creative, be smart, but be interesting."
As always Dr. Aracri says watch out for the traditional hazards of kids not paying attention and crossing streets.