From headline news to has-been
Swine flu began as a global health emergency, but thankfully never lived up to the initial fears. Cast your mind back to July 2009 and Britain was in the grip of swine flu fever. There were more than 100,000 cases a week and it dominated the headlines. When the was launched it initially went into meltdown. Little wonder as at one point the website was getting 2,600 hits per second.
The chief medical officer for England, Sir Liam Donaldson described the media interest as unprecedented, reaching "Michael Jackson proportions" (the pop legend died the previous month).
Today there is so little demand for the online and telephone service (where you can get Tamiflu simply by answering a series of tick-box questions) that it will be shut down at 1am on Thursday 11 February. The service only ever operated in England.
So does this mean we can forget about swine flu? And was it all a huge over-reaction? Millions of Tamiflu tablets remain in warehouses unused, and unless we get a fresh pandemic in the next couple of years, they are likely to pass their sell-by date. You could argue that was a waste of money, but it is easy to be wise after the event.
Professor Wendy Barclay, a virologist from Imperial College London says that the pandemic could have been a lot worse:
"If this had been a bird flu virus then we would have needed enough antivirals for everybody and everybody would have wanted it. A lot of planning went into how to deal with the pandemic and in general we have been relatively successful in the dealing with it."There is also a lot - and I mean a lot - of unused swine flu vaccine. The government ordered 90 million doses of H1N1 vaccine (with an option to buy 30 million more, which was cancelled). Thirty million of those were supposed to come from Baxter, but its vaccine was beset by problems. Two doses were needed instead of one, and there were supply difficulties - which allowed the UK government to invoke a break clause in its contract with them. The main supplier of vaccine was GSK. The government ordered 60 million doses of Pandemrix.
By my reckoning (and this is an estimate only) around 5.25 million people have been vaccinated in Britain. That means there is an awful lot of vaccine - tens of millions of doses - going spare. I'm told an announcement is likely in around 10 days regarding what will be done with the remaining stocks. As yet we don't have figures for how much the vaccine cost - due to commercial confidentiality.
A huge over-reaction or prudent planning? Sir Liam Donaldson says that he would rather be accused of doing too much to protect the population than too little:
"I would rather be on that side of the fence than having done too little, and have it on our conscience that people died who could have lived a full and active life."
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So has swine flu gone for good? Absolutely not. There may be very few cases now, but it's likely to be back next autumn and for years to come, replacing other flu strains to become the dominant seasonal flu virus.
That's why the government is recommending vaccination for everyone at risk of flu complications, plus all healthy children aged six months to under-five. Swine flu has been a very mild illness for the vast majority, but 60 children in England have died since last April. Given that this is now a vaccine-preventable illness, immunisation now should prevent the chance of them getting the virus in the future.
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