Two dengue fever cases were confirmed by Beijing Municipal Health Bureau on Friday.? These are first cases of the disease in the capital for two years. According to the bureau the two patients have been discharged from Beijing Friendship Hospital.?

One of the patients was a 29-year-old man from southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. He was diagnosed with the disease on September 16 after returning from the Philippines. The other was from north China's Shanxi Province, who was confirmed to have the illness on September 13, after returning from India. Both of them had returned to their hometowns, the bureau said.

Dengue fever was a tropical disease spread mainly by mosquitoes, said Gan Shaobo, a doctor with the hospital's tropical medicine institute, warning that Chinese tourists to Southeast Asia and Latin America should be aware of the risks.

South China's Guangdong Province had 465 dengue fever cases this summer but no deaths have been reported.

(Xinhua News Agency September 30, 2006)