THE Government has reconsidered its strategy for combating a...

THE Government has reconsidered its strategy for combating a bird flu pandemic and is on the verge of buying enough drugs to protect a quarter of the population.

John Reid, the Health Secretary, is expected to announce emergency plans to stockpile enough of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu to protect around 15 million people, the maximum number that the World Health Organisation predicts might be infected in a British outbreak.

The Times revealed two weeks ago that the Government had rejected calls from the WHO to stockpile vaccines. The Government said then that it would be impractical to stock large quanties of vaccines because the strain of virus causing a future outbreak would not be known.

But WHO said that even if the vaccines did not exactly match the virus they would still stop people dying. Last night the Department of Health said emergency plans would be announced this week. Sources confirmed that these would include buying Tamiflu doses.

Bird, or avian, flu was thought to infect only birds until 1997 when the first human cases were diagnosed in Hong Kong. By the end of January 2005 there had been 54 human cases and 41 deaths.

Scientists fear that a pandemic could occur if a person with a strain of normal flu caught bird flu.