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Bird flu: the secret Cabinet document
JAMES KIRKUP
POLITICAL EDITOR
More than 700,000 could die in worst-case bird flu scenario The
figures were disclosed in a Cabinet Office briefing paper Army could
be "too stretched to help" due to international commitments Key quote
"Scientific modelling suggests that it may only take 2-3 weeks from
the virus first entering the UK to its being widespread," - Cabinet
Office paper

Story in full THE death toll from a bird flu pandemic in Britain could
be more than 700,000, according to a confidential government report
seen by The Scotsman.

The figure - far higher than previously stated - is contained in a
Cabinet Office briefing paper prepared for emergency planning
officials, which warns that the virus could strike the country in
multiple "waves".

It also says the armed forces may not be available to help in an
emergency because of Britain's extensive international military
deployments.

Although ministers promised to order enough vaccine for the entire UK
population, the document says that effective drugs "would not be
available until at least four to six months after a pandemic had
struck, which could be well after the first wave of illness in the
UK".

Key health workers would be guaranteed the vaccine, but "other sectors
should not assume priority access to pandemic vaccine", it warns.

The Cabinet Office paper has been circulated only to "Category 1
responders" - emergency services chiefs, local authorities, NHS
officials and others responsible for drawing up contingency plans. It
details the preparations under way for a flu pandemic arising in a
number of ways, including the mutation of the H5N1 virus among birds.

The document warns that, once such an infection arrives in Britain, it
could take only two weeks to become widespread. Issued in late
February, it contains the latest updated projections for the spread of
a "novel" form of the common flu virus to which people would have no
immunity.

One of its central themes is the possibility that the virus could
mutate again after an initial widespread infection, producing further
pandemic waves. Those projections include a "reasonable worst-case
scenario" in which multiple waves of the virus infect a total of 50
per cent of the population. At worst, the disease would be as powerful
as the strain that caused the 1918 global pandemic, killing 2.5 per
cent of those infected.

"This combination would give rise to an estimated 709,300 excess
deaths in the UK across the whole period of the pandemic, spread
across one or more waves," the Cabinet Office paper concludes.

However, that death toll is at the extreme of the scenarios considered
by government scientists. The "base case", which experts believe most
likely, is for an estimated 53,700 excess deaths from a multi-wave
pandemic.

According to the Cabinet Office's civil contingencies secretariat, a
flu pandemic is one of the greatest current threats to the UK. A
mutated strain of the H5N1 avian flu virus is one possible source of
such an infection, but however the new strain arises, it is projected
to spread rapidly.

"Scientific modelling suggests that it may only take 2-3 weeks from
the virus first entering the UK to its being widespread," the Cabinet
Office paper states.