Britain has sizeable supplies of a drug that would save lives in the event of a flu pandemic resulting from H5N1, although not every expert agrees that it would be enough in the event of a pandemic.

Governments are collecting Tamiflu, an antiviral drug, amid a world shortage. The fear is that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a strain that infects humans and spreads.

The Health Protection Agency has said that the Department of Health has enough to protect a quarter of the population.

Hugh Pennington, a professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, said that giving the drug to everyone would be a “complete waste of money”. He said: “Tamiflu does not really protect the population. It treats [those] who are sick. We would not expect everybody to get ill in the event of a pandemic.”

Tamiflu, which is taken in tablet form, protects people against the short-term effects of the strains of flu that cause epidemics and pandemics. It stops the virus from replicating in the body and spreading. It can be given to a person before he or she is infected. Government vets and those culling birds on farms where the H5N1 virus have been taking the drug.

“There are warehouses all over England storing Tamiflu,” a spokesman for the Health Protection Agency said. “There are two reasons to have a stockpile — in the event of an epidemic of flu and in the event of a pandemic.”

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