Swine flu infects 100,000 in one week

THERE were an estimated 100,000 new cases of swine flu last week in England, the Health Protection Agency said yesterday.

This is around double the number in the previous week, when 55,000 people were estimated to be newly-diagnosed with swine flu in England.

It comes as the National Flu Pandemic Service for England website crashed within minutes of going live due to the volume of people trying to access it. The service allows diagnosis and the prescription of drugs over the internet or by telephone. There are now 840 people in hospital with the virus, of which 63 are in intensive care.

Most people with the virus in hospital in England are aged 16 to 64, with 435 cases, followed by the under-fives, with 169 cases.

Among those aged over 65, 149 people are in hospital and there are 87 cases among young people aged five to 15.

Flu hotspots include Tower Hamlets in east London, which is seeing 792 consultations per 100,000 people, followed by Islington in north London with 488 consultations per 100,000.

Other badly affected parts of England include Greenwich, south east London, and Leicester. Fifty-five people with swine flu have been treated in hospital in Scotland since the start of the outbreak, new figures also showed.

Only two are still in hospital, but there have been four deaths linked to swine flu. The figures came in an update from the Scottish government which said GP consultations for flu-like illnesses, not necessarily swine flu, were running at the rate of 47 per 100,000.

The Government’s National Flu Pandemic Service for England is being staffed by more than 1,500 call centre staff.

The proportion of under-fives being hospitalised has risen slightly in the last week. The statistics released yesterday showed a fall in the number of people seeking medical advice for flu symptoms in some areas of England.

But the government’s chief medical officer Liam Donaldson said it was too early to draw any conclusions that the current outbreak had peaked.

“It is a little bit of possible good news. That’s as far as I would go,” he said.

He said the Government’s response, which includes the setting up of the flu service, was 100% worthwhile.

A team working for the government is investigating deaths linked to the virus to see how much of a contributory factor swine flu is.

Donaldson said there were 26 deaths in England, which were now provisionally validated, the same figure as last week.

But Donaldson would not be drawn on how many of those deaths were new and how many deaths had been discounted in the new calculations. “Some have gone out and some have come in,” he said.

“We are down to the sorts of numbers where it might be possible to identify individuals.”

A number of the 26 deaths have been fully investigated, but Donaldson would not give the figure for reasons of patient confidentiality.

Of these, 67% had severe conditions such as leukaemia, 11% had moderate conditions such as insulin dependant diabetes, and 6% had mild conditions such as high blood pressure controlled by tablets. A total of 16% of patients had no medical conditions and were not taking any medication.

Donaldson said it was “very difficult” to interpret the figures on new cases and there was potentially signs of a slowing down in some areas. But he said he expected “a big surge in the autumn and winter”.

There were around 1,200 new cases of swine flu in Scotland in the last week.