http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340349/Swine-flu-200-fight-life-number-patients-intensive-care-doubles-week.html

Snippet:

Nearly 200 swine flu victims were fighting for their lives last night.

The number of patients in intensive care has doubled in a week and many of them are either elderly or pregnant.

Seventeen of the 190 are being kept alive by highly-specialised heart and lung machines – three times the usual number.

...
Analysis by SDI Healthcare, which models flu rates based on reports from GPs and chemists, suggests infection rates are at a five-year high.
Too little: Unlike the last time there was a swine flu outbreak, the government has been accused of not doing enough to stop the virus spreading

Too little: Unlike the last time there was a swine flu outbreak, the government has been accused of not doing enough to stop the virus spreading

It estimates that nine million Britons have been struck down – nearly one in six of the population. Twice the level seen this time last year, the infection rate is 36 per cent above normal, making it the worst flu outbreak in five years.

Three strains of influenza are in circulation: H1N1 or swine flu, flu B and H2N3. Swine flu is proving the most deadly and has claimed 14 of this winter’s 17 victims.


Sounds terrible. However:

Influenza spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in the deaths of between 250,000 an500,000 people every year, up to millions in some pandemic years. On average 41,400 people died each year in the United States between 1979 and 2001 from influenza. In 2010 the CDC in the United States changed the way it reports the 30 year estimates for deaths. Now they are reported as a range from a low of about 3,300 deaths to a high of 49,000 per year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

I guess we won't know until the season is over and the numbers are tabulated....