What our article stated was that public health officials (two of whom were named) had said that they felt the 20 confirmed cases of swine flu in Leicester were just the tip of the iceberg and that they thought the real number was 'in the hundreds' ... and that it was no longer possible to contain the spread of the virus.
It stated quite clearly that three schools had a small number of confirmed cases: Moat Community College had three, Lancaster School had four, and City of Leicester College had one. However, the officials went on to tell us that 15% of pupils at Lancaster and Moat were off with suspected cases.
The key to this is that the number of suspected cases had grown so rapidly across the city that the health authority had taken the decision NOT to test for the virus any more, but to tell doctors to make their diagnosis via a telephone interview with the patient.
Within 24 hours, the Government used very similar language to announce nationally that the virus could no longer by contained and that we could expect to see as many as 100,000 new cases a day by August. The whole country moved to 'diagnose by phone' method.
Despite this, our readers were not happy.
The very first comment on our story online came from an anonymous person calling themselves a teacher at Moat Community College: "I do not know where the papers have got their information from but 15% of our students are NOT off with Swine Flu, Thanks to this in the paper the students in Moat are very stressed out, thank you leicester mercury, but your input was not needed the students do not need to worry, there is no problem and no need for this report."
We then had this from Joanne: "my daughter is at c.o.l school i have just rang them to send her home but the school is promised my there is no cases of swine flu at the school.and very annoyed this storey has been printed."
And this: "I am a student at the city of leicester college, however i want to be kept anonymous. These falose allegations are rediculous and are worrying some people at our school. We have fath in our headteacher and we know she would keep us safe. She wouldnt open the school if she knew we were in danger. The person who apparently has the virus hasn't been diagnosed but however, is being tested.
After reading this i am glad i did not pick media as one of my gcse's. I woukld hate to be a lying journalist, scaring people into thinking things that are not true."
Finally, Chris Bell from Chochrane in Canada waded in with: "Yet again journalistic panic mongering. an obligation to inform the public or an attempt to create hysteria? me thinks the latter"
We have no interest in creating hysteria and I find it difficult to follow an argument that says we shouldn't report the fact that health officials believe the number of swine flu cases has jumped so dramatically and that they now believe the virus can no longer be contained, or, for that matter, the fact that they believe that these schools have a high number of cases.
The health authority came to us with the statements because they felt the public at large needed to know - they recognise that the Leicester Mercury is still the best way to get a message out quickly. Dr Philip Monk of the Health Protection Agency said: “It is important people realise we now have swine flu in Leicester. People should not panic, but they should be sensible and take precautions, such as good hygiene. There is evidence swine flu is spreading, particularly at Moat Community College and Lancaster School, where there are high absentee rates of pupils that have the flu. This is more widespread than we thought."
We didn't make it up and we carried the message that people shouldn't panic but should take sensible precautions several times in the article.
