Health chiefs thought a pandemic was “imminent” in 1997 and drew up a contingency strategy that provided a mass vaccination programme and closing borders.

Officers envisioned a flu pandemic to arise from the considerably east and proven a British isles-large system to offer with the well being crisis, freshly declassified documents have uncovered.

The Northern Ireland Department of Wellbeing, Social Expert services and Community Security gained the Contingency Prepare for Pandemic Influenza in March 1997, which also provided provisions to close universities.

The system reads: “The next problems coexisting propose that a pandemic is imminent – the emergence of a new pressure of influenza virus which has a marked antigenic shift – a new virus a significant proportion of vulnerable men and women in the populace, ie with no immunity to the new virus both from vaccination or from past infection with a identical virus evidence that the new virus can unfold and lead to human sickness.”

The doc continues: “Typically, new shifted strains of influenza virus have emerged in the much east and unfold via Asia or the antipodes towards Europe.

“If this happens, some warning is probably prior to a new strain appears in the United Kingdom, despite the fact that spread may be quite quick.”

It predicted that any flu originating in China would likely have a faster spread than the prior pandemic in 1968 owing to “the opening of China to trade and tourism” and “increasing global movement of individuals and higher use of immediate methods of transportation”.

In reaction, the then senior health care officer for Northern Eire, Dr Elizabeth Mitchell, drafted a contingency strategy for the region in December 1997 to enable the regional wellness provider to get ready draft preparations.

The strategy states: “Immunisation with appropriately formulated influenza vaccine can minimize the effect of influenza, specially among the these inhabitants teams most at chance of severe ailment or dying.

“An early precedence of contingency arrangements will as a result be required to protected supplies of vaccine against the new pressure and to immunise as many folks as probable.”

The draft report adds: “In general, it is unlikely that the spread…