The problem also for things like EastEnders and Casualty is: how do you seal wirth the elephant in the room? You can't really have realisitc story lines that avoid the actual virus and you also can't really go over the top about it ehter as it's so many weeks behind.
I remembe when they did a "World Cup special" in 1998, timed to go out around the time of the final in Paris. Presumably there was some mad idea that England might get to the final, and half the cast decamped to Paris where they were there for the football, but yet not.
All very odd