Flu "would spread to UK in weeks"

BBC News:

The UK would have just weeks to prepare for a flu pandemic, such as a mutated avian flu virus, if it started to spread rapidly in Asia, experts warn.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) put together statistical models to estimate how soon the UK would be affected.

Scientists say measures such as travel bans and airport screening could slow the spread of the disease.

But they say once it is here there will be little that can be done, as the disease spreads so easily.

Experts repeatedly warn of the danger a flu pandemic could occur.

They suggest the strongest possibility is that bird flu, which has infected at least 100 people and killed more than 50 in South Asia, could mutate and combine with a human flu virus, which would mean it could spread between people very easily.

The H5N1 strain of avian flu in humans has a high fatality rate.

Dr John Edmunds, from the HPA's centre for infections, said that once clusters of flu in Asia started to get bigger, with more people infected, the alarm would be raised.

He told the HPA's annual conference at the University of Warwick any pandemic would spread more quickly around the world than the last one, which occurred in 1968/69, when the northern hemisphere was affected during their winter, and countries in the southern hemisphere in their winter.

Dr Edmunds said: "This time we would expect it to be spread more quickly than it did last time because we have a lot more flights and there's a lot more contact between people these days.

"If it's spreading widely in south east Asia, then a few weeks is really all we could expect before the pandemic arrived here.

"So there isn't much time."

But he said analysis showed travel restrictions were likely to buy very little time, and be very expensive.

Screening people coming into the UK would be "very ineffective", and likely to pick up few cases because during a flu pandemic, people with symptoms would not be allowed to board a plane anyway, he said.

But many of those who did travel could be incubating flu but not showing any signs, meaning screening, say for high temperatures, on arrival in the UK would not stop cases getting through.

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