MOST people will be able to receive a vaccine for pandemic flu within six months of a lethal strain emerging, according to a rapid response strategy set out by the Government yesterday.

The Department of Health is to offer vaccine manufacturers multimillion-pound “sleeping contracts” — unprecedented cash advances to help them to prepare for the arrival of a pandemic — to ensure that there is enough vaccine for up to 60 million people.

The vaccine, which should take six months to prepare once the strain is identified, will come too late for many, with up to 15 million people expected to become infected in that period. Experts estimate that the pandemic, which will most probably emerge in the Far East, will result in the death of about 50,000 Britons.

As part of the updated flu preparations, outlined yesterday by Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, all GP surgeries and other primary care facilities will be required to compile emergency plans detailing how they will cope with many hundreds of extra patients.

Their contingency plans — which will have to cater for up to 3,000 extra patients for a large surgery in the first four months of the pandemic — will be submitted to the Department of Health for further assessment.

Sir Liam said that the Government was continuing to stockpile the antiviral medication Tamiflu, which would provide the most effective first-line treatment. The drugs are to be kept “centrally”, he said, but would be transported rapidly to any area of the country where a lethal virus emerged.

He added that healthcare workers would be first in line for the antiviral in the general population, and said that it is likely that the drug would be given only to the ill — rather than prophylactically to those yet to show symptoms — for fear of using up supplies.

The “sleeping contracts” should speed the production of an actual vaccine significantly, Sir Liam said, helping to protect the population against a second or third wave of flu.

He said that the arrangement would put the country “at the front of the queue” for mass inoculation, with 120 million doses — the equivalent of two per person — needed to cover the UK population.

“We cannot prevent a flu pandemic, but we can reduce its impact,” Sir Liam said.

“One of the most effective counter-measures we can take against a flu pandemic is to make sure we develop and manufacture a vaccine as quickly as possible. We will use this vaccine to immunise the UK population and reduce the impact of a pandemic on society.” Experts, including Sir Liam, have said that it is inevitable that a flu pandemic will emerge, and that it could kill more than 50,000 people in Britain alone.

It is widely accepted that the most likely route of a pandemic will be when avian flu in birds mutates into a form that is easily spread between people.

Fears that the pandemic will eventually hit Britain have grown in the past week after cases of the potentially lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu were confirmed in Romania, Turkey and Russia.

Yesterday Russia’s Agriculture Ministry confirmed that bird flu of the type that can kill people had been detected in poultry in the province of Tula, west of the Urals, apparently borne by wild ducks.

“Some 3,000 fowl have been slaughtered in the village of Yandovka after the discovery of bird flu in seven private farms,” Nikolai Vlasov, deputy head of the ministry’s veterinary control department, said.

“We have confirmation from the laboratory that it is the H5N1 form.”

Since 2003 about 120 people worldwide have had the H5N1 strain diagnosed, and 60 have died. Bird flu has also been confirmed in Greece, but it is not yet known if this is the dangerous H5N1 strain. Sir Liam gave warning that the annual seasonal flu vaccine, currently given to the elderly and those suffering from respiratory problems, would not be effective against any new flu virus.

The Government’s pandemic flu plans, first published in March, also outline a range of other possible measures, such as imposing travel restrictions and cancelling all mass gatherings. It is thought that these would delay the arrival of the virus by only a few weeks.

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