April 3, 2006
By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent
UK Mirror
SECRET plans have been drawn up for the mass burial of up to 320,000 bird flu victims, it emerged yesterday.
Authorities may be forced to bury the dead in "plague pits" last used in the Black Death outbreak of 1665 which killed 70,000 in London.
A leaked report warns mass burials would be necessary if a pandemic killed in excess of 48,000 and lasted more than 15 weeks.
And the backlog could mean grieving families waiting up to four months to bury relatives.
If the H5N1 virus mutates and is transmitted between humans a "prudent worst case" would be 320,000 deaths, the Home Office report warns.
It adds: "Common burial stirs up images of the burial pits used in the great plague of 1665.
"Even ramping local management capacity by 100 per cent, the prudent worst case of 320,000 deaths is projected to lead to a delay of some 17 weeks from death to burial or cremation."
But rather than tossing bodies in together, the burials may involve a large number of coffins in one pit with room for individual markers.
A Home Office spokesman would not comment on the leaked report but added: "We're taking seriously the possible threat of an influenza pandemic. Prudent precautionary planning is under way across all elements of the response."
However, the chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson has called for greater planning.
Writing in the British Medical Journal he said it appeared "inevitable" bird flu would hit humans on a mass scale, although the risk seemed slightly lower than first thought.
Bird flu has so far killed one hundred people, mainly in Asia. All became ill after close contact with infected poultry.
TWO young sisters in Egypt have been infected with the virus, taking the number in the country to eight. The girls, aged 18 months and six years, had handled dead birds.
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