Swine flu hits 100,000 cases a week

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The Department of Health said an estimated 100,000 people in England sought help in the past week, up from 55,000 the previous week.

Meanwhile, a new website to diagnose people with swine flu is experiencing "unprecedented demand" and briefly crashed within minutes of launching

The Government said the system, which launched at 3pm on Wednesday, was receiving 2,600 hits per second - or 9.3 million hits per hour - at around 5pm.

The website crashed within minutes of launching but appeared to be running normally a short time later. However, the Government admitted it was having to increase capacity due to demand.

Latest figures revealed there are now 840 people in hospital with the swine flu virus, of which 63 are in intensive care.

Most people with the virus in hospital are aged 16 to 64, with 435 cases, followed by the under-fives, with 169 cases.

Among those aged over 65, 149 people are in hospital and there are 87 cases among young people aged five to 15.

Tower Hamlets in east London continues to be the primary care trust with the highest number of GP consultations for people with flu-like illness. It is seeing 792 consultations per 100,000 people, followed by Islington in north London with 488 per 100,000. Other badly affected parts of England include Greenwich in south-east London, Leicester, Telford and Wrekin.

The website address for the National Pandemic Flu Service for England is www.direct.gov.uk/pandemicflu and the phone number is 0800 1513 100.