SANTO DOMINGO - The Dominican Republic on Saturday rebuffed Moscow's hint that the Caribbean island was underreporting its number of swine flu cases in a bid to boost tourism.

"What they say is one thing. What we are experiencing here is another. I cannot invent (sick patients) where there are none," quipped Dominican Health Minister Bautisto Rojas in an interview with the El Caribe daily.

Santo Domingo has only reported two cases so far of the influenza A(H1N1) virus that has killed nearly a hundred and infected over 15,500 worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO) figures.

The two reported Dominican cases were women -- a 20-year-old and a 58-year-old -- who had returned from the United States, which has overtaken Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak, in the number of reported cases.

"We fear that in reality, the situation is very different," Gennady Onishchenko, Russia's chief sanitary inspector, told Interfax news agency.

His statement came as Russia reported its second confirmed A(H1N1) infection case in a Russian national who had returned from the Dominican Republican after spending his honeymoon there May 7-18.

Russia on Saturday advised its citizens not to travel to the Dominican Republic over A(H1N1) virus fears after issuing similar advisories on the United States, Canada, Mexico and Spain.

Earlier this month, Dominican President Leonel Fernandez recognized that the A(H1N1) outbreak in Mexico had bolstered the tourism sector in his country, where tourism accounts for seven percent of the gross domestic product.

"In this case, the misfortune of one country has benefited another, it is not what we desired but it is the situation," Fernandez said, noting that despite the global economic downturn, more tourists have visited the Caribbean country so far this year than during the same period in 2008.