FEARS that people in Wyre Forest had contracted a human form of foot and mouth were quashed this week.

The Shuttle/Times and News had been told three people in Chaddesley Corbett, the centre of the district outbreak, were being tested for the disease.

A spokesman for Chaddesley Corbett surgery said nobody had been tested there for either foot and mouth disease or hand, foot and mouth.

Spennells folk worried that children had been diagnosed with "hand, foot and mouth" as a result of pyres at Stanklyn Lane proved unfounded as this is a normal viral illnesses which has nothing to do with the outbreak.

A spokesman for Worcestershire Health Authority said there were no reported cases in the county and that it was not possible for humans to contract foot and mouth disease.

A MAFF spokesman said none of the people being tested nationally had been proven to have contracted the disease.