Swine flu website collapses
Friday 24th July 2009, 1:15PM BST.
A website set up to help diagnose swine flu crashed after being inundated with an unprecedented level of interest – receiving more than nine million hits an hour within two hours of its launch.
A website set up to help diagnose swine flu crashed after being inundated with an unprecedented level of interest – receiving more than nine million hits an hour within two hours of its launch.
- To visit the website click here
The National Flu Pandemic Website, which launched at 3pm yesterday, was receiving 2,600 hits per second or 9.3 million hits per hour when it crashed at about 5pm.
The huge volume of traffic caused the site to temporarily crash but it was running again a short time later.
The Government’s Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson today said the interest was down to people being curious rather than visiting the site because they had the disease.
The launch of the site came as a pregnant woman from Scotland, who is critically ill with swine flu, was flown to Sweden for specialised treatment.
The woman, 26, was admitted to Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock last week where she was put on a ventilator because of an extreme reaction to the H1N1 virus. She was flown to Sweden because no bed was available in the UK for the procedure she needed.
In Shropshire, new figures today showed that there are currently three patients with swine flu being treated at either the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital or Telford’s Princess Royal.
There’s none at Oswestry’s Orthopaedic hospital according to a weekly bulletin of statistics released to MPs by Shropshire County Primary Care Trust.
Today Sir Liam insisted that the majority of people visiting the new website had done so out of curiosity.
He said: “We would estimate around the very, very most that there were 20,000 out there when the flu line was switched on who might have had genuine flu.
“Nine million people decided to visit the site because there was such intense media interest in this story and many, many more people were aware of it than if it had moved into use in a routine way.”
Sir Liam insisted the message swine flu was not generally a severe illness was getting through.
He also played down media reports of estimates that more than 60,000 people could die of swine flu. New figures showed there were an estimated 100,000 new cases of swine flu last week.
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I’ve just been in my doctors practice this morning to find the magazines removed ‘to limit infection’ but strangely the desk bell is still there. What are we supposed to do? hit it with our foreheads? This hysteria is all wonderful news for our squirming government as once again the country loses its rational compass.
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The suggestion that you can create a website that handles an infinite amount of traffic with no monitoring is complete nonsense.
At some point it was inevitable that a guess was going to have to be made about the amount of traffic this site was going to receive and if that was then exceeded bandwidth limits would need to be revised. As this site appears to be working fine I would guess that this is what has happened?
Of course everyone including the Tory influenced media will point to this as another government fiasco! I imagine the Tories will claim that they would have done everything better (as they are obviously the saviours of the NHS) and no doubt some of the fools who post on here will actually believe them.
I work with companies directly involved with this pandemic and personally consider that the Government has actually been very well prepared and handled this situation well. TBH I would be making an awful lot more money if they hadn’t, perhaps I should start voting Tory!
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Well, what do you expect to happen – the press (TV, Radio and web) have been going rabid (SIC) about this. They (the press) have been winding everyone up into a fury about something they know little about and fill with complete mis-information. Then the govt. opens up something and a panic’d people plague it.
Watch the mega-graphics on the TV news, the bold big headlines – what are people supposed to think! Its all simplified beyond sensible comprehension. I saw the morning news and some presenter chided a politician or BMA expert saying that accurate information should be got out – forgetting that the press isn’t patient enough to wait for facts in their race to sell papers or get ratings.
This article starts by reporting the website is down and includes a link to go to it. To quote the great Homer “D’oh!”
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Got a letter today posted second class from PRH Telford to say that my surgery due on 11th August,that I have been waiting for over the past 9 or 10 weeks has now been cancelled indefinately, no reason given. When I eventually managed to speak to someone on the phone I was told that it was because the Private Apley ward is going to be used as a swine flu isolation ward. I only switched to having the operation done privately because I was not getting anywhere with the NHS in the first place.
Astonishng really, as there is only a maximum of 3 patients currently in the hospital with swine flu and I have been in immense pain continuously for over a year. Furhermore I would only have needed a bed for 1 day. Isn’t Britain great !!
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