The number of people who have contracted Legionnaires' disease in the biggest outbreak in the UK for more than a decade today rose above 100.
Nearly 900 have now been tested for the bug, a potentially fatal form of pneumonia, of whom 103 have been confirmed as having contracted the disease.
Today, 72 of those remained in hospital while 15 less seriously ill patients were being treated at home by their GPs. A further 16 have been discharged from hospital.
All had been in the centre of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in recent weeks, hospital officials said.
Initial inspections of the arts centre thought to be the source of the outbreak have suggested that its air conditioning plant was in a state of disrepair and that its disinfection system may not have functioning properly.
The building has been disinfected and the air conditioning plant, which it is thought spewed tiny droplets of water carrying the disease over thousands of shoppers every day, has been isolated and will remain shut down.
So far 137 people have been treated in hospital for either confirmed or suspected cases of the disease, eclipsing doctors' early predictions on the scale of the outbreak.
When the news broke last Friday, health officials said they expected to see up to 130 people hospitalised by the end of this week and as many as 20 people die following the outbreak.
Seventeen people were today in intensive care units at five hospitals in the north-west of England, with a further six patients in high dependency wards as far apart as Barrow-in-Furness and Ormskirk, Lancashire. Five of those were currently giving doctors "cause for concern".
PA