The latest figures for deaths from H1N1 flu, published by the Health Protection Agency for week 48, raise an interesting question. 

The latest figures for patients hospitalized in England for suspect swine flu provide an opportunity to compare the current cases with those in the first wave in July.

The risks to pregnant women from swine flu are real. Yet many may still resist vaccination because they fear that carries an even greater risk. What do the data so far tell us?

In today’s Guardian, Professor David Salisbury, Director of Immunisation at the Department of Health, is quoted as saying that H1N1 vaccine is completely safe for pregnant women.

A headline in the news section of this week’s BMJ reads: "people with asthma most at risk from H1N1 complications". But are they?

Here’s a novel way of looking at the H1N1 flu pandemic, by courtesy of Ron Law, a New Zealand risk and policy consultant.

Cases of H1N1 have been creeping up again, with Scotland - where children went back to school several weeks earlier - leading the way. 

When a British soldier dies in Afghanistan, we know within days the sex, age and region of residence of the fatality, together with the immediate cause of death. How different it is for swine flu.

We have been told, in surveys of dubious validity, that a third of nurses and up to half of doctors would decline to take a vaccine against swine flu. Regardless of whether these figures are right, they do serve to highlight a salient issue: how are we going to design vaccine studies persuasive enough to resolve these doubts?

There are big gaps in UK data on swine flu, many of them because so few virological confirmations of H1N1 seem to be being undertaken anywhere. But virology matters - and if more tests had been done, we might begin to understand why the number of people in hospital for swine flu in England is so much greater than in Scotland.