Health authorities in central China's Hunan Province have ended a week-long quarantine for 157 people who had close contacts with two confirmed bird flu cases --one of whom died.

Some 126 people in Changsha County were quarantined after a two-year-old girl was diagnosed of avian flu on January 17; and another 31 in Huaihua County were quarantined after a 16-year-old boy died of the same disease on January 20.

"None of them had any flu-like symptoms during the period, so the health department decided to end quarantine as of 0:00 AM Tuesday," said Liu Ke, a spokesman with the Hunan Provincial Health Department.

Those under quarantine included family members and relatives of the patients, medical workers who treated them and drivers who assisted their travels, he said.

A two-year-old girl, surnamed Peng, fell ill in Changsha County on January 7. Undiagnosed, she was taken to the northern Shanxi Province by her grandparents on January 11. Peng was confirmed to be infected with avian flu on January 17 at a hospital in Taiyuan.

Health authorities in Shanxi said last week Peng was "out of danger" and her vital signs were stable.

China has reported five human deaths from the H5N1 virus this year. In the latest case, an 18-year-old man surnamed Liang died Monday in the southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. He was ill since January 19.

The other four deaths included a 19-year-old woman in Beijing on January 5, a 27-year-old woman in Shandong on January 17, a 16-year-old boy in Hunan on January 20, and a 31-year-old woman in Xinjiang on January 23.

(Xinhua News Agency January 27, 2009)