Cooling towers suspected of spreading legionnaires" disease closed He died less than 24 hours after being admitted and like most of those who have become ill had underlying health issues. Test results on 19 cooling towers that have been treated at six sites are not expected until next week, but the distillery is thought to be in the right location in south-west Edinburgh to explain the spread of cases. The other sites tested include McFarlan Smith, a pharmaceutical company, the insurance firm Aegon and the biscuit-maker Burton's Foods. People are thought to have contracted the disease after legionella bacteria were released from a cooling tower in a plume that drifted across the Gorgie, Dalry and Saughton areas of the Scottish capital. One person in the north of England and one person in the Highlands contracted the disease, but both had visited Edinburgh. There have been 28 confirmed cases of the potentially fatal illness and 46 people are suspected to have contracted the disease. Fourteen patients are being treated in intensive care, with 30 on general wards, while 15 are being treated in the community and ten have been discharged from hospital. Health officials expect the number of new cases to drop this weekend and said yesterday that they still believe they have stopped the release of the bacteria at source. A spokesman for the North British Distillery said: "Our thoughts are clearly with the families of those affected by this situation. Ensuring the health and safety of our employees and the local community is our highest priority. Having reviewed the current situation, we have voluntarily taken our cooling towers off-line until the Legionella results from samples taken earlier this week are reported. While this precautionary operation is under way we have temporarily ceased distillation. Sir Harry Burns, Scotland's chief medical officer, said those presenting with the illness were less ill than earlier in the outbreak and he hoped the cases would drop off in the coming days, adding: "Typically it takes six to 10 days for the disease to incubate. So they (the cooling towers) were treated last weekend, you would hope that in the course of the next few days we would begin to see a drop-off in the number of cases, and if that is observed then we can be more confident that these cooling towers are the source. If it doesn't happen then clearly there is a more complicated background to this and further investigations will be required.