Water supplies to nearly 60,000 residents of a town in Inner Mongolia will be restored today when sanitation workers finish cleaning pipelines after thousands fell ill from contaminated water.
Some 4,307 people became sick and the Health Bureau in Chifeng said 1,209 remained in hospital.
Since July 25, some of the 58,000 residents in Xincheng - a new district in Chifeng - have reported suffering from fever, vomiting and diarrhoea after drinking the tap water.
The city's construction committee attributed the contamination to a downpour on July 23.
Last week it told Xinhuanet the deluge had flooded and polluted wells that supplied water to the district and the amount of coliform organisms and salmonella bacteria had exceeded safety standards.
In a notice issued on Saturday, the city government reminded residents to leave the taps running to ensure the flushing-out process was finished.
It said the clean-up would take three days.
