Health chiefs give up on swine flu containment

Health chiefs tonight conceded that swine flu cannot be contained by shifting their strategy to treatment.

Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer, said Ireland was now following other countries such as the UK and moving past the stage of containing the outbreak.

Mr Holohan said there were now 104 confirmed cases of the condition, with as many as eight patients presenting every day.

“What it (new strategy) does is acknowledge that containment is no longer an effective strategy and that resources are better targeted towards ensuring appropriate treatment and interventions to support the treatment of people that have become cases, as supposed to any real prospect of stopping the transmission through containment,” Mr Holohan said.

“So we’ve taken the decision in principal that we should shift our policy from containment to one of mitigation.”

Professor Bill Hall, chair of Ireland’s National Pandemic Influenza Expert Group, said they expect a significant rise in the numbers coming down with the condition in the autumn and winter.

Under the new treatment phase, due to come into force next Thursday, the anti-viral Tamiflu will be provided free of charge through prescriptions from GPs instead of through public health offices.

Vaccines have also been ordered and the first batch is expected to arrive by the end of August.