SCOTLAND has about 170,000 doses of the antiviral drug needed to combat a flu pandemic compared with the target stockpile of 1.3 million, the country’s Chief Medical Officer revealed yesterday.

The target, which is based on the number of Scots expected to suffer from pandemic flu, will not be reached until a year from now, Harry Burns said.

If a pandemic was to strike Scotland now only one in 30 Scots could expect to be treated with antivirals compared with the one in four who could catch the virus. Many of those who would be treated with the antivirals such as Tamiflu would be health sector employees, of whom there are about 150,000 in Scotland, and other key workers.

Britain as a whole has about 2.5 million doses of antiviral medicine already in stock. About one in ten of the British population lives in Scotland, which suggests that there should be about 250,000 antiviral doses available already north of the border.

But Dr Burns, speaking at a media briefing on preparations for a flu pandemic, was quick to dispute any suggestion that this meant that Scotland was relatively unprepared or was being treated as a poor relation in terms of readiness.

“It is a credible rate of accrual against the risks and we have no reason to believe that a pandemic will emerge in the next few weeks,” he said. “The stockpile is happening as fast as the manufacturers can provide it and you have to remember every country is trying to acquire antivirals. We are not in a flu pandemic situation and the risk is no higher now than it was earlier this year.”

Dr Burns also agreed that there was a widespread “myth” that the antivirals available could successfully treat the pandemic flu virus. “We have not used them before . . . and their effectiveness is something we need to speculate on. There is a myth going. Quite how they are going to be used we will need to refine,” he said.

The possibility of a flu pandemic hitting Scotland comes as the Met Office is predicting that there is a 65 per cent chance that this winter will be significantly colder than recent relatively mild winters, with the average temperature over December, January and February reaching only 1.8C (35F), the lowest since 1995-96. Last winter the average temperature in Scotland over these months was 4C and the previous year it was 3.2C.

Forecasters emphasised that these were only predictions but such average temperatures could stretch the NHS in Scotland to breaking point if they came on top of a flu pandemic.

Thousands of vulnerable pensioners could be at risk of dying in Scotland if the worst fears are realised. The Met Office is urging people, particularly the elderly, to take steps now before the cold weather arrives, to keep their homes heated to a minimum of 18C.

There are other anxieties that the recent spate of energy price rises could militate against that, especially in the two million British households that are officially in “fuel poverty”, spending 10 per cent or more of their income on energy.

Dr Burns underlined that Scotland was at the forefront of planning to deal with any human flu pandemic that occurred and that Scots had to differentiate between normal winter flu, pandemic flu and avian or bird flu which, he said, did not pass easily from human to human.

The bird flu virus, he emphasised, was “quite difficult” for humans to acquire and as it mutated could lose a lot of its virulence. “We are seeing millions of birds infected but only a few humans and these are humans in close proximity to birds. Pandemic flu can affect people of any age. Pandemic flu could affect a quarter of the population. On the basis of previous experience such as the Asian flu outbreak of 1957-58 where between 30,000 and 35,000 died in the UK, 10 per cent of that figure — between 3,000 and 3,500 — would be the mortality we would anticipate in Scotland,” he said.

“For contingency planning purposes it is always best, however, to err on the side of caution . . . a minimum figure of 5,000 deaths in Scotland.”

That figure is much lower than the 50,000 possible deaths predicted a few months ago by Mac Armstrong, Dr Burns’s predecessor as Chief Medical Officer, who had, however, been speaking about the worst possible scenario.

“It is difficult to speculate until we see the strain of the virus which emerges,” Dr Burns said. He pointed out that a fully tailored flu vaccine could not be made available at the start of a pandemic flu outbreak and a specific vaccine could only be developed once a pandemic strain had been identified. This might take a maximum of six months because each flu strain is different and any vaccine will need to be developed and tested.

The Scottish Executive is embarking on a public information leaflet campaign about pandemic flu. If an outbreak occurred, it could mean the closure of schools, the cancellation of public events such as football matches and rock concerts as well as advice to people not to travel.

This week the Executive published contingency plans for dealing with a Scottish outbreak of bird flu. The plans detailed how, in the event of an outbreak, poultry in an infected area would be slaughtered by methods including gassing, injection and electrocution. The bodies of the slaughtered birds would be disposed of by incineration, rendering or landfill.

Times Recommends

• UN may halt 400-year-old 'freedom of the seas'
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone
• Gas deal on hold, but Ukraine may pay in the end