MANAGER Sam Allardyce has confirmed that several members of his first-team squad are suffering from swine flu.
The Rovers boss said there are now three confirmed cases within the squad, and several more of his playing staff are displaying swine flu-type symptoms.
Nevertheless, tomorrow's fourth round Carling Cup tie with Peterborough will still go ahead as scheduled, even though Big Sam is facing the prospect of having to pick from a depleted squad.
The Rovers chief said: "Obviously, we've had two players who have been particularly poorly with it, and we've had a few more that have had something which looked like the symptoms, but they still managed to travel with us and get through the game at Chelsea.
"We are now hoping we don't see too many more this week, although we have seen one more today.
"If it is going to run through the club, we want to get it through as quickly as possible and get it over and done with it, because I'm told that once you've had it, you can't get it again.
"That would be very important, rather than two or three here and there, going on for the next few weeks.
"Hopefully it will clear up very quickly, but if we are to get more cases then I hope it's this week, so it's done and dusted."
With several players in the camp displaying flu-like symptoms before the weekend trip to Stamford Bridge, Rovers took the step of notifying Chelsea about the situation prior to the game being played.
Big Sam said: "We knew we couldn't get the game called off at Stamford Bridge, because the Premier League rules state you can't call a game off. They made that abundantly clear to us before the end of last season, when swine flu first broke out.
"I think I read in the paper that we hadn't requested to have the game called off, and we didn't make that request because we knew we couldn't. Premier League rules state that you have to field a team no matter what.
"We knew we had to get on with it, we notified the Premier League, we had the courtesy to notify Chelsea to the same degree, knowing very well that we may have passed on some of our cases to them, and them to others, and so on. That's just the way it is.
"We've abided by the rules and regulations of the Premier League. We didn't want a three-point deduction so we went ahead and played it."
Although the outbreak clearly hampered Rovers' preparations for the Chelsea game, the manager felt there was still no excuse for the manner in which his team performed on the day.
He added: "One or two felt under the weather and could easily have said to us on Saturday morning that they should be deselected, but they didn't.
"They had their paracetemol and went out there, and perhaps one or two of them faded away, and you can understand that.
"But I still don't think, even with a few players under the weather, you capitulate like we did and lose 5-0."
