Just one intensive care bed was available in North Yorkshire today as the flu bug continued to sweep the country.

New figures being released today were expected to show another national rise in the number of people suffering flu-type symptoms.

But regional health chiefs said intensive care units in Yorkshire were coping.

A spokeswoman for the NHS Executive Northern and Yorkshire Region said: "The situation is still tight.

"We are coping, there are beds there for people who need them and the situation is changing hour by hour."

She understood some patients had been moved between ICUs, but said the number was not high and no-one had been transferred outside the region.

The six-bed ICU at York District Hospital was full today, and a spokeswoman said the people in there were all accident and emergency patients rather than ones involved in elective (non-urgent) surgery.

The hospital has cancelled all non-urgent operations due to the massive influx of patients it has faced, many of them elderly people with flu-type symptoms.

The three intensive care and one high dependency beds at Scarborough General Hospital were also full and some patients had been transferred to other ICUs, according to communications manager Gilly Collinson.

A spokeswoman for the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton said its two ICU beds were also full.

The only available bed was at Harrogate hospital.

The virus has hit the north of England and the Midlands particularly hard.

A spokesman for the Department of Health admitted that the rising rates of flu and respiratory diseases were adding to the pressure on the NHS but said staff were coping.

A spokesman for the Public Health Laboratory Service said: "We would expect to see further rises over the next one to three weeks, though we cannot say by how much the incidence will rise."

For most sufferers, flu is simply a particularly unpleasant and debilitating bug version of the common cold.

But influenza can also be a killer, contributing to an average of 3,000 to 4,000 deaths a year.

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