The health ministry revealed on Friday that there have been , in addition to the five that had been previously confirmed.

Investigations for three cases have already been completed and no causal relationship with the supplements could be confirmed. The other 76 cases are still being probed.

Although the ministry had required the company to report to the public the number of cases in which negative health impacts were linked to the supplement, Kobayashi had not updated the death toll since it rose to five on March 29. The ministry told the company to confirm the death toll on June 13, but Kobayashi only said that ¡°there were cases under investigation¡± and did not report the new numbers until Friday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi called Kobayashi Pharmaceutical¡¯s failure to report the updated death toll on time ¡°extremely regrettable¡± at a briefing Friday afternoon.

The ministry instructed the pharmaceutical company to create a plan to carry out an investigation into the causal relationships between the newly reported deaths and their products.

¡°Going forward, the health ministry will ensure proper progress management and have the company investigate the causal relationship between individual cases and Kobayashi Pharmaceutical¡¯s red yeast rice products,¡± Hayashi stated.

The major pharmaceutical company was placed under investigation by the ministry earlier this year after news broke that consumers taking the company¡¯s beni k¨­ji supplements had reported health problems, with 289 people hospitalized and over 1,600 patients having visited medical facilities as of Wednesday.

Earlier reports found that puberulic acid ¡ª or blue compound mold ¡ª along with two other unexpected compounds had been the most likely cause of the health issues. The substances had entered a batch of the raw red yeast rice material produced between June and August last year during the manufacturing process.

Meanwhile in Taiwan, more than 30 victims filed a class-action lawsuit against the drugmaker¡¯s Taiwan subsidiary, the Consumer Protection Association in Taiwan said at a news conference in Kaohsiung on Thursday.