Swine flu doubling in Britain

SHOOT: One must maintain perspective here. The current levels are behind the seasonal flu trends of a bad winter, at least for the time being.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The number of new cases of swine flu in England has almost doubled over the last seven days to 9,000, official figures show. That compares with 5,000 the previous week, and 3,000 before that. In Scotland, the new weekly figures showed a slight increase from 6,180 to 7,034. While the majority of cases continue to be mild, the total number of swine flu-related deaths in the UK rose to 82. The figures are on the increase but they are still some way short of what they were in July when England alone was seeing more than 100,000 cases a week. And, to put it into context, the levels being reported are below the amount of seasonal flu that could be expected during a bad winter. "Everything suggests we are seeing the start of the second peak, but we just don't know how big that will be."