A MAJOR medical monitoring group has claimed 80,000 Europeans could die from swine flu in the coming months, naming Ireland as one of the EU’s hotspots for the deadly pandemic.

SWINE flu could claim nearly 2,700 lives here if worst-case predictions for the spread of the disease come true, Europe’s top disease detectives have calculated.

IRELAND is ready to fight off the winter flu with enough anti-virus in stock to treat almost two million people, it emerged yesterday.

Mutations in the bird flu virus have been found in two people in Egypt, in a form that might be resistant to the medication most commonly used to treat the deadly disease, according to laboratory tests approved by WHO.

A bird flu outbreak that killed four children in Turkey this month seems to have stabilised after authorities destroyed 1.5 million fowl to contain the virus, and no human cases have been reported since January 18.