Two people are in intensive care in a Scottish hospital after falling critically ill with swine flu, raising fears that the virus is now spreading more quickly and more widely than before.
The two new cases include the first Briton to fall critically ill wholly from the swine flu virus. The 45-year-old man is in an isolation ward at the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley, along with a 38-year-old woman who also has underlying health problems.
To the alarm of health officials, the cases are linked neither to each other nor to travel; nor are they known to be connected to the two other clusters in the Glasgow area.
Those involve a 37-year-old Sikh man with pre-existing health problems, who was the first Briton to fall critically ill and is in intensive care, and the group centred around a busload of Rangers fans from Dunoon.
The Scottish health secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, said the emergence of the latest cases suggested the current strategy of trying to stop the virus spreading through containment and the voluntary quarantine of suspected and confirmed cases was no longer working.
The number of cases was likely to rise significantly in coming weeks, she added. "We're getting closer now to a situation where the containment strategy we have been pursuing up until now will evolve into something different," she said.
"We are now seeing sporadic cases in the community, with clusters taking place around them. Therefore the message to the public is to be vigilant and alert and – crucially – to follow key hygiene advice, which becomes even more important now."
Sturgeon said public anxiety about these cases was understandable. However, the vast majority had so far been mild. "But," she warned, "in any flu scenario, small numbers of patients will develop complications and will require ... medical intervention."
The new cases bring the UK total to 362. There are signs of a sharp acceleration in infections, six weeks after the disease first emerged in the country. Health experts warned at the weekend that the virus was very likely to develop rapidly into a full pandemic next winter.
The cluster of 23 cases surrounding the Rangers supporters bus, which came to light on Monday, more than doubled the total number of Scottish cases overnight.
And Sturgeon said a further 23 new cases had been reported across Scotland today , with 61 confirmed cases reported by the Health Protection Agency in England – another sharp rise.
A Scottish government spokeswoman said urgent efforts were now under way to trace all close contacts of the two critically ill patients in Paisley and to establish how they had become infected. "Contact tracing and investigations are ongoing at the moment," she said.
