Report Says Flu is Bigger Risk than Terror in UK

The British government has released its first ever national threat assessment which found pandemic flu, not terrorism, is the biggest threat to the United Kingdom.

The Associated Press’ David Stringer says the report is part of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s overhaul of the country’s homeland security strategy. It considers the dangers posed by threats including terrorism, climate change, extreme weather and pandemic disease.

“Previous government assessments have suggested an outbreak could cause as many as 750,000 deaths in Britain and acknowledged it could take several months to develop adequate vaccines against a particular strain of the virus,” Stringer says.

And even though the new register does not rank threats in order of seriousness, it does indicate that flu is considered the most pressing concern, a spokeswoman for the Cabinet Office told Stringer.

“It looks at the whole range of risks and looks at them from a national perspective,” the spokeswoman told him, on condition of anonymity. “It is the first time all of this has been brought together in this way.”

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