(Adds Hong Kong case) BEIJING, May 23 (Reuters) - China reported two confirmed cases of H1N1 flu in Beijing late on Friday, bringing the total to seven nationwide, but officials in the Chinese capital city said the pandemic alert level will not be increased. The two patients, both in their sixties, had returned to China from the United States and Canada recently, the health ministry said in statements posted on its website. The first H1N1 patient in Beijing, a Chinese student studying in the United States, was discharged from hospital on Friday after six days of treatment, local media reported. Beijing has not raised the alert level, because the four cases in Beijing so far bear no correlations, Deng Ying, director of Beijing Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, was quoted by the Beijing News as saying. In Hong Kong on Friday, the Centre for Health Protection confirmed a new case of H1N1 infection, bringing to four the total number of cases in that crowded city. A Hong Kong Department of Health spokesman said a 19-year-old woman was found to have the virus after returning from the United States, where she was a student. She was on the same flight as a patient confirmed to have been afflicted with swine flu in Taiwan. Dr. Margaret Chan, chief of the World Health Organization, warned on Friday the world must be ready for H1N1 swine flu to become more severe and kill more people. The WHO is poised to declare a full pandemic of the virus, which has infected more than 11,000 people in 42 countries and killed 86. And U.S. health officials released $1 billion for companies to get started on a vaccine in case it is needed. (Reporting by Michael Wei and Tom Miles; additional reporting by Susan Fenton in HONG KONG; Editing by Jerry Norton)
A woman wears a medical mask while walking past a hospital in Taipei May 22, 2009. Taiwan has confirmed its fifth case of H1N1 flu in a 24-year-old Taiwanese woman, Deputy ...
