Laboratory tests indicate that eighty-six people in two townships, including more than 20 children, have been infected with hepatitis C virus, a Health Ministry spokesman Deng Haihua confirmed Tuesday.
Authorities are looking into the possibility that the source is a family-run clinic in Maqiao township, Yongcheng city, Henan province.
A preliminary epidemiological probe conducted by the ministry and provincial authorities has confirmed 23 hepatitis C cases in Dancheng of Anhui province and 63 cases in Maqiao of Henan province, Deng said.
"None of them were showing any symptoms, but they have received proper treatment," Deng added.Â
Local health departments are conducting a further investigation into the outbreak and will publicize the results in a timely manner.
According to China Daily, the actual number of cases might be larger than reported ones. Jia Jidong, who leads the Beijing Friendship Hospital's liver-research center said 30 to 50 percent of those infected could clear their systems of the virus within six months and would test positive only for HCV antibodies.
When the scandal first broke out, many, including Anhui health authorities, suspected that the family-run clinic in Maqiao township, about 8 kilometers from the border between the two provinces involved, may have been reusing infected needles.
But an initial probe in Maqiao found no contaminated needles at the clinic, said a statement issued online by the local government on Sunday.
However, Wu Zunyou, director of the National Center for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Control and Prevention, has indicated that the needles might have been discarded or sterilized right before the investigation.
The statement said the investigation at the clinic continues, and the local health authority would increase supervision of hygiene and disinfection, particularly at grassroots village clinics.
"Subsequent analysis conducted among confirmed HCV patients would help identify similarities, such as clinics they may have all frequented before contracting the virus, and that would be significant for the investigation," Wu said.
"Other factors, like the patients' ages, have to be considered, too, before drawing any conclusion," he said.
The probe at Maqiao found that most of those confirmed to have been infected were age 45 and older, said a statement issued by the city of Yongcheng.
"For them, it is also possible that they were infected in the botched plasma-selling scheme in the mid 1990s," Wu said.
But the HCV incidence rate at Maqiao township, the probe found, stands at 1.22 percent, far higher than the national average of 0.43 percent. At the village of Shenlou in the township, the incidence rate reached 4.6 percent.
"Based on the surprisingly high incidence rate, we can tell that something must be going wrong there," Wu noted.
Li Jian, deputy director of the health bureau of Guoyang county, Anhui province, however, was cautious in discussing the latest findings of their probe.
Unlike Yongcheng in Henan, Li's bureau had not released detailed investigation results by Tuesday.
"We are still working on it, and, so far, it's too early to say the clinic in Maqiao is the culprit," he said on Tuesday.
But he disclosed that most of the 23 people confirmed infected in Dancheng were children, and local people had no contact with the plasma-selling scheme in the mid 1990s.
"Moreover, we've found that many of the infected children often went to the Maqiao clinic for treatment," he said.
Lei Zhenglong, deputy director of the ministry's disease prevention and control bureau, said hepatitis C transmission through medical practices like blood transfusions, dialysis, and organ transplants are a concern, and the ministry would regularly conduct field inspections at health institutions across the country.
But he also conceded that clinics in rural areas are hard to manage and can hold a greater risk of infecting patients.
