Swine Flu: Government Set to Abandon Daily Recording of New Cases

The government is due to announce a major change in its handling of swine flu outbreaks today, with the daily recording and reporting of cases expected to be abandoned because of the increasingly rapid spread of the virus.

The health secretary, Andy Burnham, is due to make a statement on swine flu in the House of Commons just after midday. With the number of cases confirmed by laboratory tests set to exceed 7,000 today, it is likely that the policy of trying to contain the H1N1 virus may be abandoned in favor of "outbreak management".

In swine flu hotspots such as London, the West Midlands and parts of Scotland, which have already moved to the outbreak management phase, diagnosis of the virus is now being done by doctors rather than laboratory testing and tracing the contacts of people with swine flu and the preventative use of anti-viral drugs has stopped. Anti-viral drugs are still being offered to all people with symptoms.

Collating daily figures is proving time consuming but the government and other agencies recognise they still need other ways of regularly informing the public.

Other countries already update their swine flu numbers less frequently, for instance, weekly or every other day. Among the options being considered by the government is weekly updates on the spread of the disease, with cases reported as a number per 100,000 of the UK population. This is how traditional flu cases are reported each winter, and with the NHS preparing for tens of thousands of swine flu cases a week by the end of this year, a similar system would be understood by public health experts.

The Health Protection Agency yesterday announced another 342 patients in England have been confirmed with swine flu, while the figure for the UK as a whole rose to 6,929.

The official statistics on the virus are likely to underestimate the true scale of infection in the UK because only a sample of patients in the hotspots now have a diagnosis of swine flu confirmed by lab tests. Furthermore many people are thought to have such mild symptoms they are not even bothering to contact their doctors and others are being treated in surgeries without being regarded as suspected swine flu cases.

Although a bout of swine flu is currently causing less serious illness than traditional seasonal flu, three people with other serious health conditions in the UK have died after catching the virus and there are concerns that it could mutate into a more virulent form.

The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has already warned that there may be tens of thousands of cases each week this autumn, because the virus is more likely to thrive in a colder climate.

Meanwhile, senior doctors have warned parents not to take their children to "swine flu parties" in the hope that they catch the disease now and build up immunity.

Although no firm evidence has emerged that these are taking place, the family website mumsnet.com has seen discussions between parents on whether they should deliberately expose their offspring to the virus in the same way that chickenpox parties are sometimes arranged to allow friends to have the once-only disease at a convenient time.

Richard Jarvis, of the British Medical Association's public health committee, said: "I think parents would want to take into account that the flu – although this strain is relatively mild for the most part – is something that will knock people off their feet for a few days and we are seeing appreciable morbidity, severe side-effects and sadly the occasional death."

Scientists have found the first case of the new H1N1 influenza strain showing resistance to Tamiflu, the main anti-viral flu drug, Danish officials and the manufacturer said yesterday. It was expected that the strain would at some point show resistance to Tamiflu, Denmark's State Serum Institute said. The patient is now well and no further infection with the resistant virus had been detected.