Alberta government extends E. coli compensation program to more daycares

The Alberta government appears to have extended a one-time payment of $2,000 for each child affected by an E. coli outbreak in Calgary to 19 daycares.

Alberta Children and Family Services posted a link to an online application form on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.

The form links to a list of daycares, which includes the original 11 daycares affected by the outbreak as well as eight others that have since had partial or full closures due to secondary transmission.

Minister Searle Turton also put out a Facebook post saying it includes families whose child-care program was fully closed or directly affected by a partial closure or exclusion order due to the E. coli outbreak declared on Sept. 4.

Turton's post says the details would be revealed in the coming days, and Alberta Children and Family Services declined to comment, so it wasn't immediately clear how much more the program would cost or how many people would receive payments.

The program was initially expected to cost more than $2.5 million for nearly 1,300 children.

Premier Danielle Smith said last week the program would only be available to parents of the 11 daycares at the root of the outbreak, which put dozens of children in hospital and caused hundreds more to fall ill with the bacterial infection.

Investigators are still looking for the source, but have previously said it almost certainly came from a central kitchen used by the daycares.

As of Thursday, when the province last provided an update, there were six children still receiving care at the Alberta Children's Hospital.

There have been 349 lab-confirmed cases of the bacterial infection related to the outbreak and a total of 29 secondary cases, as of the last update.

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