UK: Doctors to issue 'fast track' death certificates for swine flu

Doctors are to be allowed to issue "fast-track" death certificates under Government plans to help the health system cope with the workload at the height of the swine flu pandemic.

Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer for England, confirmed the planned move in an interview on BBC's Newsnight.

"We want to try and reduce as much as possible the burden of work on doctors and we're considering all sorts of things which wil help with that," he said. "It's one of a number of things that we hope at the height of the pandemic - which we may see in the autumn and winter - will reduce the burden of paperwork for doctors."

But Sir Liam, the Government's principal advisor on public health issues, disputed a report from researchers at Imperial Collge London suggesting that 0.5 per cent - or one in 200 - of those who are ill enough to seek help for swine flu will go on to die as a result of it.

That projection means that there could be as many as 500 people a day dying of the virus by the end of August, by which time, according to the Health Secretary Andy Burnham, the daily infection rate could have hit 100,000.

"The range that we're working with is lower than the Imperial College predictions," Sir Liam said. "But the point is that nobody can be absolutely sure what level of mortality we'll actually see. It's very early days."

Separately, Sir Liam disputed comments from Dr Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organisation, who cast doubt on minister's claims that the UK would start receiving its first stocks of swine flu vaccine this summer.

Dr Chan told the Guardian that a vaccine could be available as early as August. "But having a vaccine available is not the same as having a vaccine that has been proven safe," she added. "Clinical trial data will not be available for another two or three months."

The WHO chief's comments came as Australia and Japan reported a surge in cases of the H1N1 virus, and Argentina dramatically upped its death toll from 94 to 137 in just three days. So far 16 people are known to have died in the UK after contracting the virus.

Responding to Dr Chan's comments, Sir Liam said: “She may be commenting from a global perspective, but as far as the UK is concerned, we are still expecting to get 60 million doses of vaccine by the end of the calendar year and for the first supplies to arrive in the early autumn.

“There is some uncertainty because vaccine manufacture involves a complex process of testing biological products, so it can sometimes go wrong and cause delays. We then have to license it properly and that may take a little time, but we still will be one of the first countries in the world to get vaccine.”

Asked again about the likely mortality rate, Sir Liam said that he would issuing new planning assumption to the NHS later this week. “They need to know broadly what numbers of patients might be hospitalised, what sort of pressure will be put on the NHS," he said. "Statistical modelling is very valuable, but we do need to treat it with caution early on.”