H1N1 - Swine flu claims fourth UK victim

© ITN 2009 An H1N1 swine flu sufferer has died in London, health officials have announced.

This is the fourth person to die in the UK is understood to have been a 19-year-old man from south London who had serious underlying health problems. He died on Wednesday and tests afterwards found he had the virus.

His was announced a day after it was revealed that the number of new cases could reach 100,000 per day by the end of next month.

Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson, who confirmed on Thursday that the UK has moved past the stage of containing the swine flu outbreak and into the "treatment phase", said there was no need for people to resort to the internet to self-medicate amid fears over the spread.

He said Britain had a massive stockpile of the now discredited, Tamiflu and would be one of the first countries to have access to a new potent vaccine, when the first supplies started arriving at the end of August, if all goes well with the testing and certification. By which time, the virus is likely to will have burned itself out and the death toll will have risen dramatically.