The latest figures on Scotland's flu outbreak suggest the worst may now be over.

The number of people who went to their doctor with flu-like illnesses dropped by almost a third last week, with reductions in almost all health board areas.

Scientists monitoring the situation say numbers are now at the normal level for this time of year.

But they have warned that people must remain vigilant because of the increased risk of contracting meningitis in the wake of the flu outbreak.

Tayside figures

In Tayside, the overall rate has dropped to 585 per 100,000 head of population, which is under the official epidemic level.

In Angus, the figure is still more than the 1,000 threshold but has dropped considerably from the 2,500 reported last week.

Last week, Health Minister Susan Deacon said the National Health Service was coping "exceptionally" well with the flu outbreak.

NHS 'not in crisis'

She acknowledged that admissions in some hospitals were up by 50%, but insisted the NHS "was not facing a crisis and was not in chaos".

In a statement to the parliament, she said: "Words like crisis, chaos and shambles should not be used to describe the NHS in Scotland - that is a language I do not know and do not understand.

"There has been exceptional pressure which has been met with exceptional effort."

Ms Deacon said experts were predicting that the flu outbreak would peak this week.

Opposition criticism

However, opposition MSPs rounded on the minister and accused her of putting a gloss over the very real crisis in the NHS.

The Scottish National Party's health spokeswoman Kay Ullrich said: "Make shift wards, nursing staff doing back-to-back shifts, the cancellation of non-emergency operations - is that coping?

"That is what I call crisis management."

Last week's figures showed that Scotland as a whole was not in the grip of an epidemic, which is declared when there are 1,000 cases of infection per 100,000 people in Scotland.