UK Cases of Swine Flu: How Couple's Honeymoon in Cancun Ended in Isolation Unit

It was a most unwelcome wedding present for Iain and Dawn Askham.

Four days after returning from their honeymoon at a holiday resort in Cancun, Mexico, they found themselves in Scotland's main infection diseases isolation unit.

The Askhams, a newly married couple from the small town of Polmont, near Falkirk in central Scotland, were named yesterday as the UK's first and so far only confirmed cases of swine flu. A little over three weeks ago, they had enjoyed a vibrant wedding - Iain grinning in his traditional Highland dress and Dawn smiling shyly in a white wedding dress with its pale pink veil - at the Three Kings hotel near Falkirk.

Bronzed by the Caribbean sun, they flew home on Tuesday, back to their modest semi-detached home in a quiet cul-de-sac, where dandelions, wild bluebells, gnomes and shrubs border their gravel yard, and prepared to get back to normality and work.

Iain, 27, works for Scottish Power and is a keen amateur footballer with a local six-a-side team, FC Mallard, which plays at Stenhousemuir's local stadium. Dawn, 24, works in a backroom in the dispensary at a local branch of Boots.

On Thursday Iain started feeling unwell. Presumably he shrugged it off as a spring bug, but when Dawn too felt poorly on Saturday, alarm bells rang. On Saturday night, their neighbors said, paramedics arrived, but little was thought of it. Then yesterday morning, the UK's media arrived with the drizzle, to the bemusement of residents.

In a joint statement issued yesterday afternoon by the couple's parents, Iain and Pauline Askham, and Linda and Brian Colston, the families noted: "They were both quite shocked that the result was positive for swine flu."

Within hours, both families and close friends - 22 people in total - found themselves under surveillance. And it emerged yesterday, nine of those "close contacts", including a five-year-old, now have "very mild" cold symptoms and may have contracted the virus.

In six other areas of Scotland, a further 14 people with cold-like symptoms, all recent travellers to Mexico and affected areas of the United States, are being tested. While in England, another passenger on the Askhams' flight home last week is also under surveillance, after showing mild symptoms of flu.

Both sets of parents are now under voluntary quarantine, taking regular doses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu, waiting for the couple to be discharged from hospital.

Colston, soon weary of the media attention, spoke very briefly to reporters at his home in Falkirk, to confirm his daughter was quickly recovering. "She's doing OK, she's getting better," he said.

Scottish ministers and senior health experts have been at pains to insist their symptoms are very mild and no one else has yet tested positive, but locally, the fear of contagion has spread faster than the virus.

FC Mallard's game in the Prostar Super league, scheduled for tonight, has been cancelled. At Dawn's branch of Boots, some of her workmates have been allowed home - none are known to be ill - tested, and given precautionary antiviral drugs.

Calls to NHS24, Scotland's phone-in service for medical advice, have jumped 20% in one day.

Paul Diplacido, 23, a close neighbor of the Askhams, said: "I just hope they get better. I feel for them and their family because it's quite a serious thing, the flu. It's quite a nightmare that they just go away on their honeymoon and this has happened."

John Baxter, 60, a retired docker and close neighbor, added: "To catch swine flu on honeymoon is a horrible start to married life."