Further details tonight emerged of Government plans to deal with a human flu pandemic. The chief medical officer in the UK has advised schools should be planning
closures in case the bird flu virus mutates into a form that can be
transferred from human to human. Sir Liam Donaldson has warned that a pandemic could kill 100,000
schoolchildren. He said school closures could halve that number. In a letter to schools minister Jacqui Smith - leaked to The Sunday
Times - he wrote: "Until the pandemic virus emerges we cannot know for
certain which groups would be most vulnerable. "If all age groups were affected equally, and the virus was
particularly severe (ie at the upper end of our assumptions) the excess
deaths in school-age children could be as high as 100,000. This would
mean that potentially 50,000 deaths might be prevented by school
closures." Source : 24dash.com
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