All of the 75 people who had close contact with the first MERS patient in China were released from quarantine in Guangdong province by Wednesday midnight, the provincial Health and Family Planning Commission said on Thursday.

The first 44 people, after showing no symptoms and testing negative for the Middle East respiratory syndrome virus, were released on Tuesday at midnight. The remainder left quarantine on Wednesday at midnight.

The virus has an incubation period of two weeks, so the potential victims needed to be kept under close medical observation for 14 days from the last day they had contact with a South Korean MERS patient.