July 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. government urged pregnant women to take precautions against swine flu after one person with the virus died after giving birth prematurely last week.

“Anybody in pregnancy is more careful about where they go, what they do,” Health Secretary Andy Burnham told the BBC radio’s “Today” program. “They should take precautions, and rightly so.”

Burnham will address Parliament at 3:30 p.m. today after swine flu killed 29 people in the U.K. The government has been criticized by opposition parties for the way the National Heath Service has reacted to the rise in the number of cases of the disease.

“Now, as vital weeks have passed and the number of cases has surged, it is clear that the government’s dithering has damaged the ability of the NHS to respond coherently to the outbreak,” said Shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley in an e-mailed statement today.

Burnham said women should “consider” not making unnecessary journeys and avoiding crowded areas. Pregnant women have been identified as being at risk from the virus because pregnancy can hurt the immune system.

Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, told the BBC today that mothers-to-be should “not panic” and should “get on with their lives.” They should take some minor precautions such as avoiding visiting people with influenza.

So far, 10,649 cases of swine flu have been confirmed by laboratory tests in the U.K., the Health Protection Agency said. The agency estimates that last week there were 55,000 new cases of the virus.

The threat of swine flu to the British economy has also been highlighted today. The Item Club, an economic forecasting group sponsored by Ernst & Young LLC, said in a report that if the government’s worst-case scenario occurs and half the population is infected, the epidemic would cut 3 percent from U.K. gross domestic product in 2009.

Source : Bloomberg.com