Swine flu outbreak

Speaking at this month's swine flu briefing in Belfast, the Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride said that the worst is behind us.

According to figures released by the Department of Health, the number of antiviral prescriptions has dropped by almost 40% since last week and GP consultations for symptoms have dropped by a quarter while out-of-hours consultations dropped by almost a third.  Even Michael McGimpsey acknowledged, 'We are now experiencing the same level of flu activity as this time last year.'

This is rather different from the situation just a matter of weeks ago when Minister McGimpsey was demanding vast additional sums of money to deal with the outbreak and predicting that he would need it to buy body-bags and procure morgues for the bodies!