Halloween is still on in Connecticut
Plenty of advice available for protection, but some cities are opting out
Jaelynn Glines, 6, is a big fan of Halloween, and even the extra frights of 2020’s coronavirus pandemic have not dimmed her spirits.
“She talks about it all year,” the Bristol girl’s mother, Shannon Glines, said Friday as they shopped for a unicorn costume.
As of now at least, trick-or-treating for Jaelynn and all Connecticut kids is still on.
“I anticipate we’re going to have a Halloween season,” Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday, according to CT News Junkie.
“It’s a time of the year when people automatically wear masks, they often wear gloves, so it seems like you’re 90% of the way towards a safe way to do Halloween just by definition.”
Still, there’s a lot of advice available about boosting safety for this fright night, which falls on a Saturday.
Harvard Global Health Institute and a trade group, Halloween & Costume Association, offer a safe Halloween website that includes an interactive map of the U.S. — halloween2020.org. Each county is color coded for the number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, starting with green, less than 1 case; then yellow, from 1-10; orange, 10-25; and red, more than 25. As of Friday, all eight Connecticut counties were yellow.
For the yellow zone, the site recommends tossing treats from 6 feet away so kids can scoop and bag them at a safe distance, or setting up curbside candy stations. Alternatives include an Ohio man’s “candy chute” — cbsloc.al/33IpWae — a sturdy tube strapped to a handrail that has been widely shared on social media.
Some government leaders, however, say the risks of spreading the disease are too scary. Springfield is among communities that already have banned door-to-door trick-or-treating.
“We have all worked so hard to continue to defeat this COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic ... we just don’t want to go backward,” Mayor Domenic J. Sarno and city Health and HumanServices Commissioner Helen Caulton Harris said in a joint statement. “We must continue to be smart and safe in order to continue to build public, consumer, and business confidence.”