The unprecedented level of interest in a website to help diagnose swine flu was down to curiosity rather than people logging on because they had the disease, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government's chief medical officer, has said.
Swine flu website: Visitors attempting to have their symptoms assessed were directed to a holding page. Photo: PA
The National Flu Pandemic website, which launched at 3pm on Thursday, was receiving 2,600 hits per second – or 9.3 million hits per hour – at around 5pm.
The huge volume of traffic caused the site to temporarily crash but it was running smoothly again a short time later.
Sir Liam Donaldson insisted that the majority of people visiting the site had done so out of curiosity.
On Friday, he told GMTV: "We would estimate around the very, very most that there were 20,000 out there when the flu line was switched on who might have had genuine flu.
"Nine million people decided to visit the site because there was such intense media interest in this story and many, many more people were aware of it than if it had moved into use in a routine way."
Sir Liam insisted that the message that swine flu was not generally a severe illness was getting through to the public.
Acknowledging that 9.3 million was a very high figure, he said: "What the evidence shows so far – and I've just had a briefing this morning – is that many of the people visiting the website were doing so out of curiosity, they were starting to use the checklist and then abandoning it quite soon.
"What we can be pretty sure of is that the number of people who were visiting because they needed the service, because they had genuine symptoms of flu, was quite small.
"We expect it to settle down."
Sir Liam also played down media reports of estimates that more than 60,000 people could die of swine flu.
He said: "That's not an estimate of what will happen. What we had to produce a few weeks ago was a planning assumption for the NHS and it ranged from a few thousand deaths to, if there was a serious change in the virus and it mutated, which is not something we expect, that we might have a higher number.
"But people should not be alarmed by that. We want to be open with people – we didn't want to have a secret planning document that would cause concern and anxiety.
"We put the figures out there. They are just planning assumptions. Everything looks as though it will be at the milder and much lower end of that and indeed we are doing very well at the moment in combating the disease."
Sir Liam's comments come after new figures showed there were an estimated 100,000 new cases of swine flu last week – around double the 55,000 in the previous week.
Conservative health spokesman Mark Simmonds said the flu telephone and internet service should have been set up earlier when a global pandemic was declared.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Friday: "Indeed, the fact that the website crashed yesterday, within two to five minutes of it being up and running, I think is a function of the fact that it wasn't up earlier.
"Therefore people couldn't access the information, they couldn't discover themselves whether they had the appropriate symptoms that would give them the opportunity to get Tamiflu."
Dr Alan Hay, director of the London-based World Influenza Centre, estimated that the number of swine flu cases would peak within the next two weeks ahead of a return of the virus in the winter.
He told Today: "I think we will see a peak in this country in the next week or two if not already – it will reduce, we don't know to what extent the level will drop down to a background level.
"We've seen in the US, although they peaked many weeks ago, that the level of infection in some of the states is still quite widespread.
"So it's a bit too early to predict the trough that we will see before we see the virus re-emerge in the winter."
Asked about the Government's response to the pandemic, he said: "We've only really observed this over the last few weeks so, in terms of response, of course people could have done more sooner but that again might have raised greater alarm among the population."
He said the current level of infection was the highest it had been since the 1999-2000 epidemic season.
One of the major differences with a normal flu season was that swine flu adversely affected those aged under 45, he added.
"There is some information which suggests that people over the age of 60 or so may well have some immunity against this virus because of some prior exposure to a similar virus."
The number for the National Pandemic Flu Service for England is 0800 1513 100 and the website address is http://www.direct.gov.uk/pandemicflu
Swine flu website: Visitors attempting to have their symptoms assessed were directed to a holding page. Photo: PA
The National Flu Pandemic website, which launched at 3pm on Thursday, was receiving 2,600 hits per second – or 9.3 million hits per hour – at around 5pm.
The huge volume of traffic caused the site to temporarily crash but it was running smoothly again a short time later.
Sir Liam Donaldson insisted that the majority of people visiting the site had done so out of curiosity.
On Friday, he told GMTV: "We would estimate around the very, very most that there were 20,000 out there when the flu line was switched on who might have had genuine flu.
"Nine million people decided to visit the site because there was such intense media interest in this story and many, many more people were aware of it than if it had moved into use in a routine way."
Sir Liam insisted that the message that swine flu was not generally a severe illness was getting through to the public.
Acknowledging that 9.3 million was a very high figure, he said: "What the evidence shows so far – and I've just had a briefing this morning – is that many of the people visiting the website were doing so out of curiosity, they were starting to use the checklist and then abandoning it quite soon.
"What we can be pretty sure of is that the number of people who were visiting because they needed the service, because they had genuine symptoms of flu, was quite small.
"We expect it to settle down."
Sir Liam also played down media reports of estimates that more than 60,000 people could die of swine flu.
He said: "That's not an estimate of what will happen. What we had to produce a few weeks ago was a planning assumption for the NHS and it ranged from a few thousand deaths to, if there was a serious change in the virus and it mutated, which is not something we expect, that we might have a higher number.
"But people should not be alarmed by that. We want to be open with people – we didn't want to have a secret planning document that would cause concern and anxiety.
"We put the figures out there. They are just planning assumptions. Everything looks as though it will be at the milder and much lower end of that and indeed we are doing very well at the moment in combating the disease."
Sir Liam's comments come after new figures showed there were an estimated 100,000 new cases of swine flu last week – around double the 55,000 in the previous week.
Conservative health spokesman Mark Simmonds said the flu telephone and internet service should have been set up earlier when a global pandemic was declared.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Friday: "Indeed, the fact that the website crashed yesterday, within two to five minutes of it being up and running, I think is a function of the fact that it wasn't up earlier.
"Therefore people couldn't access the information, they couldn't discover themselves whether they had the appropriate symptoms that would give them the opportunity to get Tamiflu."
Dr Alan Hay, director of the London-based World Influenza Centre, estimated that the number of swine flu cases would peak within the next two weeks ahead of a return of the virus in the winter.
He told Today: "I think we will see a peak in this country in the next week or two if not already – it will reduce, we don't know to what extent the level will drop down to a background level.
"We've seen in the US, although they peaked many weeks ago, that the level of infection in some of the states is still quite widespread.
"So it's a bit too early to predict the trough that we will see before we see the virus re-emerge in the winter."
Asked about the Government's response to the pandemic, he said: "We've only really observed this over the last few weeks so, in terms of response, of course people could have done more sooner but that again might have raised greater alarm among the population."
He said the current level of infection was the highest it had been since the 1999-2000 epidemic season.
One of the major differences with a normal flu season was that swine flu adversely affected those aged under 45, he added.
"There is some information which suggests that people over the age of 60 or so may well have some immunity against this virus because of some prior exposure to a similar virus."
The number for the National Pandemic Flu Service for England is 0800 1513 100 and the website address is http://www.direct.gov.uk/pandemicflu
