Mike O'Brien (Minister of State (Health Services), Department of Health; North Warwickshire, Labour)

Information on the number of people who contact their general practitioner (GP) each week is not collected. At the start of the outbreak, cases of swine flu were confirmed by laboratory testing and recorded by region not primary care trust (PCT). This information is available until 2 July 2009 and is given in the following table.

On 2 July we moved to the treatment phase of the response to swine flu and we are now using clinical diagnosis instead of laboratory confirmation to identify cases of swine flu. This means we can no longer give detailed data about the precise number of cases. However, we have well-established seasonal influenza surveillance systems to monitor the spread, activity and impact of swine flu.

3,300 GP surgeries provide reports on symptoms of flu in patients as part of the Q-Surveillance scheme and a further 100 surgeries across the country collect information on flu symptoms as part of the Royal College of General Practitioners surveillance scheme. This information is used to calculate the levels of influenza like illness in England. This information is published on a weekly basis by PCT on the Health Protection Agency website at:

www.hpa.org.uk/hpr/infections/primarycare.htm