Isolation has been lifted from 124 people who had close contact with a young man who died of bird flu in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, early this month.

The Guangzhou City Health Bureau announced on Wednesday that all the 124 people were removed from medical observation on Sunday.

The 32-year-old man, surnamed Lao, was the first human case of bird flu in Guangzhou. He started to show symptoms of fever and pneumonia on February 22. Lao died on March 2 after all rescue work failed.

Local medical experts ruled out that his girlfriend, who caught a fever, was infected with bird flu and discharged her from a hospital on Saturday.

Guangzhou also terminated the daily report on the bird flu situation emergency measure, as no new bird flu outbreaks in poultry or new suspected human cases have been detected, according to the local health bureau.

As of March 7, the Chinese mainland had reported 15 confirmed human cases of bird flu, among which 10 resulted in deaths.

Globally, 175 human cases, involving 95 deaths, have been reported to the World Health Organization as of March 6, according to the WHO's website.

(Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2006)