Alberta still working on application portal for E. coli outbreak compensation

Minister Searle Turton said he’s working with different ministries to get the application web portal up and running so families can access the funds.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misidentified Searle Turton’s ministry. He is the minister of children and family services. We regret the error.

For the first time since the E. coli outbreak started in Calgary daycares more than two weeks ago, no new cases have been added to the tally.

But parents hoping to get some relief to their pocketbooks are still waiting for the province to launch a web portal for applications to receive the promised “compassionate compensation.”

In the past day, provincial authorities said there were no new lab-confirmed cases linked to the outbreak, and no new secondary infections were identified.

As of Sept. 19, 348 lab-confirmed cases have been identified as part of the outbreak, 27 of which were the result of secondary transmission.

Chief medical officer of health Dr. Mark Joffe said the fact that Alberta Health Services is not seeing a “significant spike” in secondary cases is “cause for cautious optimism as we move to what we hope will soon be the end of this extremely serious outbreak.”

The CMOH said there are still eight children under five who aren’t yet well enough to return home from hospital, all of whom have hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a kidney- and blood-related complication. One child was discharged from hospital in the past day.

Two children still need dialysis treatments, one fewer than yesterday, Joffe said.