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School closures in the autumn to curb the number of swine flu infections are unlikely at the moment and would have an "extremely disruptive" effect on society, the Chief Medical Officer has said.
Sir Liam Donaldson said the possibility of school closures would be kept under review but in past experience - such as in the West Midlands - this had not been effective at controlling the virus.
He was speaking as ministers were asked to consider closing schools this autumn to help curb the number of swine flu infections.
"I think it would take a lot for us to move in that direction, it would be extremely disruptive to society - when would you open them again, given that flu might be around for several months," he told GMTV.
"If we look at what we did in the West Midlands for example, where we did very aggressively initially close schools, treat people with Tamiflu who didn't have symptoms but were contacts of cases, eventually it broke out of the box and spread more widely.
"I think we will obviously keep all of these things under review as we do with any scientific advice, but at the moment I think it is unlikely."
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Amid predictions that the number of cases will soar as the school holidays come to an end, two infection experts have argued that a school closure programme could "break the chains of transmission" and buy time to produce a vaccine.
Professor Neil Ferguson and Dr Simon Cauchemez, from the department of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, also cited studies showing that closing schools at the height of a flu pandemic could cut the number of cases by up to 45%.
"The (swine flu) pandemic could become more severe, and so the current cautious approach of not necessarily recommending school closure in Europe and North America might need reappraisal in the autumn," they said in the paper, published in the leading medical journal The Lancet.
The scientists quoted a recent French study which suggested that "proactively" closing schools could reduce flu cases by 13% to 17% overall, and by between 38% and 45% during the outbreak's peak.
