- LONDON (AFP) - Hundreds of
thousands of people may die and one quarter of the work force could be
absent if Britain were hit by a bird flu pandemic, a senior government
official said.
- "It may be somewhere between 20,000 and 750,000
extra deaths and it may be 25 percent of the population off work,"
the government official, speaking on a non-attributable basis, told a conference
in London.
-
- "That is the shape of the event we are going to
have to deal with," he said.
-
- Britain's population is nearly 60 million people, with
28 million working, according to government figures.
-
- Contingency plans already announced by Britain's health
department include the stockpiling of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu at a
cost of 200 million pounds (380 million dollars, 290 million euros).
-
- The country's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson,
has also previously described a national preparedness plan the government
is ready to put in place should the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu
virus develop into a new strain that spreads from human to human.
-
- Measures include closing schools and cancelling public
gatherings like football matches and pop concerts, as well as issuing travel
warnings.
-
- The estimate of 750,000 dead put forward was described
later Tuesday by a health department spokeswoman as a "theoretical
upper limit" of a catastrophe.
-
- She said the government was sticking to its estimate
of 50,000 British deaths, a number advanced earlier this month when it
published its contingency plan.
-
- The higher figure, presented to an international forum
at the International Institute for Strategic Studies came days, came days
after a leading scientist warned that the government's estimate was "optimistic".
-
- Professor Hugh Pennington, president of the Society for
General Microbiology, said he believed up to two million Britons could
perish from a mutated form of the H5N1 virus.
-
- He has criticised current planning for an outbreak, warning
that a strain affecting humans will be "here before we know it".
-
- Though the government has ordered 14.6 million vaccine
doses for Britain they will take up to two years to arrive, prompting some
worries that the population could be at risk in the interim.
-
- Since last January, some 46 people in southeast Asia,
most of them in Vietnam, have died after contracting a type of the disease
as a result of contact with sick or dead birds.
-
- Medical experts have warned that if the virus develops
the ability to pass from human to human, the consequences would be devastating.
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