all people with symptoms in Britain would be offered treatment with antiviral drugs.

Sir Liam confirmed that the UK had moved past the stage of trying to contain the swine flu outbreak and into the “treatment phase”. He added yesterday that there was no need for people to resort to self-medication and warned the public to avoid panic-buying “counterfeit” antiviral drugs online.

He said that Britain had a massive stockpile of Tamiflu and would be one of the first countries to have access to a vaccine, with the first supplies arriving at the end of next month.

Sir Liam said: “There’s generally a growth in people ordering drugs from the internet worldwide and there’s a lot of concern among health authorities that people might buy counterfeit drugs. I think this is a similar situation — people shouldn’t buy Tamiflu from the internet. We have a massive stockpile in this country and everybody can have access to it through the National Health Service.”

Sir Liam added that he was “surprised” that health services had controlled the virus for as long as they had. The first case in Britain was recorded in April.

He said: “We have been dealing with it very aggressively so far — we have investigated every case, we’ve treated their contacts, we’ve closed schools and all of that has helped slow the spread. We are surprised that we have been able to run it as long as we have like this. Flu viruses spread extremely quickly, so this is very much going as expected.”

The numbers

7,447 cases of H1N1 swine flu confirmed in Britain so far

100,000 new cases predicted each day by the end of August

35 per cent of the population may become ill at the peak of the pandemic

£800m cost of antiviral drugs stockpiled to treat 80 per cent of the population

£155m cost of contracts for vaccines for the pandemic flu strain over four years

12,000 deaths annually due to seasonal flu, likely to be far exceeded in a pandemic

Sources: Department of Health; Times database

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