The launch pad for Britain's swine-flu outbreak was an innocuous, pebble-dashed semi in Polmont in central Scotland's commuter belt, the home to Britain's first swine-flu victims, newlyweds Iain and Dawn Askham. It was the start of a series of "swine flu" firsts for Scotland: the Askhams were followed by the first case of virus transmission within the UK, the first critical cases, and the first death outside the Americas.
The Askhams had carried the H1N1 virus home from the Caribbean resort of Cancun: four days after leaving their Mexican hotel suite, they were in isolation at Scotland's main infectious diseases unit at Monklands hospital in Airdrie. Over the next two days, 22 close family and friends were ordered to stay at home and were given antiviral drugs. One friend, Graeme Pacitti, the goalkeeper in Askham's amateur soccer team FC Mallard, found brief fame as Britain's first case of "human-to-human" transmission of swine flu.
From their isolation ward, the Askhams had the foresight to call on the publicist Max Clifford. Hours after leaving hospital, they had sold their stories. And so the panic began.
Torbay had the first school closure, after a girl who was on the same flight home as the Askhams caught the virus. Holiday flights back from Mexico became "plague flights" as health specialists strove to trace passengers sitting near swine-flu victims.
It took five weeks for swine flu to properly catch hold, when two patients were admitted to intensive care in Paisley. Later in May, a Rangers fan from Dunoon in Argyll managed to infect 17 fellow fans on a coach to Dundee, bringing swine flu to the southern Highlands.
But to the surprise of epidemiologists, the outbreak was largely confined to southern Glasgow, Paisley and Dunoon: thousands of suspected cases elsewhere proved negative. Then on Sunday 14 June Jacqui Fleming, from Carnwadric, Glasgow, who had been admitted to hospital pregnant with her third son, became the first swine flu death outside the Americas. Polmont is now just a footnote in the story.
