Doctors are being warned to prepare for a second, "much worse" wave of swine flu hitting Britain in the autumn, the Health Secretary has disclosed. Alan Johnson said that the lesson of past pandemics was that initially mild outbreaks had been followed by something "much more serious". His comments came as the number of confirmed cases of swine flu in Britain rose to 18, including two children, with as many as 716 possible patients now being tested.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) last week issued a "level five" alert for the virus, meaning that a full pandemic is "imminent".But in Mexico, the epicentre of the global outbreak, the health minister, Jose Angel Cordova, said that the disease now appeared to be in its "declining phase" in the country where there have been more than 500 confirmed cases. Despite the growing number of cases in the UK, Mr Johnson claimed that the outbreak appeared to be "contained". But he warned that there was "absolutely no doubt" that there would be more new cases. He said that previous pandemics had been characterised by a "second phase". "This is a new virus, it has never been seen before," he told the BBC. "People talk about Sars and bird flu, and that was never the subject of a WHO alert, and we are now at stage five of an alert.
"Our evidence from all previous pandemics is you get two phases. So you get a first wave which is often very mild and then you get a much more serious wave that comes along in the autumn and the winter. "So we have to not just deal with this outbreak now but prepare perhaps for a second phase further down the line.". Urging people to "have a good bank holiday" he added: "So far – because we've managed to get to people to isolate it, we've got the stock of antivirals for them and their families and the people they have met – I think it is contained.
"There will be more cases ... there's absolutely no doubt of that, but at the moment all the evidence is we can confine it, contain it and treat it effectively."
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