National swine flu service set up

There's growing concern over swine flu. It's after the government confirmed on Thursday that 29 people in the UK have already died after contracting swine flu.
The number of dead's more than doubled in just a week. The government's top doctor in England, Sir Liam Donaldson, said figures being used by the NHS to plan how the service copes with epidemic are working on a worse case scenario of a possible 65,000 deaths.

By the end of next week there''ll be a National Pandemic Flu Service for England. It means anyone who thinks they are sick can be diagnosed online or on the phone. It could help cut the speed at which the flu spreads, because people won't have to go to the doctors to get a prescription. Everyone the service thinks has swine flu will then be given a special code. That will allow them to send a so-called "flu friend" out to get them the Tamiflu drug that's being used to treat the flu.

Newsbeat has been to the headquarters of NHS Direct in central London to see how they're coping with the epidemic.

NHS Direct: Swine Flu help and advice

Paula Higson is Chief Operating Officer at NHS Direct. She told Newsbeat: "We've been very busy indeed, about half our calls are about flu."

Big cities

"We're dealing with 6 or 7,000 people a day who think they have flu symptoms," she added.

"Take yourself to bed, drink lots of fluid, take paracetamol, maybe some over-the-counter cold remedies"

Most of those cases are still in big cities like Birmingham and London.

For almost everyone who gets it, the effects are more like a nasty cold rather than a life threatening disease.

Paula Higson has this advice: "For most people this is a very mild disease.

"Take yourself to bed, drink lots of fluid, take paracetamol, maybe some over-the-counter cold remedies.

"What we're saying is take a week off. That's going to do it for most people. A week to 10 days at the outside."

NHS Direct say they're getting so many calls that rather than ringing them up, the best thing to do is go to their website.

But if you're pregnant, have young children or are on strong medication, the message is get in touch with your doctor.