Britain fears it could face more than 100,000 daily cases of swine flu and the US has called a top-level meeting as governments grapple with a resurgent swine flu pandemic.
The warning from British Health Secretary Andy Burnham came as the Japanese health ministry said doctors had detected the second case worldwide of a patient resistant to the anti-viral Tamiflu, widely used to treat the illness.
Burnham told parliament that 100,000 cases a day could occur in Britain by the end of August if the current infection rate is maintained.
The country already has Europe's highest number of reported cases.
Health officials say they are abandoning trying to stop the flu spreading, instead focusing on people who are most susceptible, such as the obese or those with asthma or breathing problems.
"Cases are doubling every week, and on this trend we could see over 100,000 cases a day by the end of August, but I stress this is only a projection," Burnham told the House of Commons on Thursday.
Britain now had nearly 7,500 cases of swine flu, he added, with hundreds of new cases being confirmed every day. Three people with the virus have died in Britain so far.
The latest numbers from the World Health Organisation, released on Wednesday, showed 77,201 reported swine flu cases, with 332 deaths.
In Washington, the White House said it would hold a high-level meeting next week bringing together top government officials to prepare for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of A(H1N1) influenza.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will take part in the meeting at the National Institutes of Health next Thursday.
The meeting was called after the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that at least one million people in the United States have had swine flu, basing the projection partly on computer models.
There have been roughly 28,000 confirmed cases of swine flu in the United States and 127 people are reported to have died, the CDC said.
The Americas have been the hardest-hit by the disease, with the United States, Mexico, Canada and Argentina suffering the vast majority of the world's fatalities.
Thousands more have been infected in New Zealand and Australia during the southern hemisphere's winter flu season.
On Thursday, the WHO vowed that poor countries in the Americas would receive enough anti-virals to combat the swine flu outbreak.
At a summit in Cancun, Mexico, WHO director-general Margaret Chan said Roche had promised to supply 5.6 million Tamiflu treatments for distribution to developing countries.
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