Fears for kids as swine flu cases double

Fears about the capacity of hospital's intensive care units to cope with a surge in cases of children struck down with swine flu were raised yesterday as figures showed that the pandemic was gathering pace.

An estimated 100,000 new cases of swine flu were recorded this week, almost double the 55,000 in the previous week, and the under-15s were predominantly affected.

All regions of the country are now seeing "exceptional levels of influenza activity", which was "highly unusual" in summer, the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, said.

The National Flu Pandemic Service, launched to coincide with the release of the new figures, crashed within minutes of going live. The website and telephone helpline, designed to enable the public to diagnose swine flu and collect antiviral drugs, appeared to be running normally later and was experiencing "unprecedented" levels of demand, the Government said.

The website service is backed by a telephone helpline staffed by more than 1500 call centre staff, capable of answering more than 200,000 calls a day - or more than a million calls a week, officials said.

It is intended to take the pressure off GPs and other hospital services which have seen huge peaks in demand in some places.

Douglas Fleming, of the Royal College of GPs monitoring centre in Birmingham, said: "There has been an approximate doubling in cases in all areas, except Wales. If this were happening in winter, on top of all the other respiratory infections, the impact would be very much more substantial. The impact would be very high indeed."

Intensive care specialists view the way the virus is infecting and causing serious illness in children with alarm. The proportion of under five-year-olds in hospital rose to five times the rate for other age groups and 12 under-fives were in critical care.

The number of deaths from swine flu remained at 26 in England. There were four deaths in Scotland. One-third of the deaths were in children under 16 and three-quarters were aged under 45 - the reverse of the pattern with seasonal flu which is most serious in the elderly.

- INDEPENDENT