Santa likes to spread goodwill and cheer, but that's all he wants to spread. The Ontario provincial government unceremoniously trotted out the URL for information about the flu at this year's Santa Claus parade in Toronto. But as disconnected as Santa and the flu sound, taking the children to Santa's workshop in the local mall may put them at a particularly high risk for exposure to the H1N1 virus.
This is a fact that is not lost on mall Santas across North America, who are scrambling to find ways to protect children and themselves (and them's elves). Many will be providing hand sanitizer stations where parents pay for their pictures; in Regina, a mall-Santa hire was strongly advised to get the vaccine for himself. In fact, a U.S.-based association of mall Santas in petitioning to get its members priority access to the vaccine.
Whenever Santa shows up at Coquitlam Centre mall, he'll be changing his gloves every two hours, according to the CBC. He also "does a lot of hand-washing in between", and his helpers are charged with the additional duty this year of wiping down all the display equipment and the fences on breaks. "Every time it's a little slow," said one of the helpers. But the real news here is that children displaying flu symptoms will be "asked to take a pass" on seeing Santa. Parents who voluntarily decide to come back later will be offered free Santa photos.
"We're also asking that [professional Santas] wash their beards and hair daily because they can harbour bacteria very easily," Jennifer Andrews, head of Victor Nevada's Santa School in Calgary, told the Edmonton Sun.
For more on the risks to mall Santas, watch the video below.
