An investigation has been launched after three babies died at the Royal Jubilee Maternity Service
A spokesperson for the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety said the baby who is still undergoing treatment for the pseudeomonas infection, which affects the chest, blood, and urinary tract, is responding well.
The infection can be treated with the right antibiotic, but the third baby who died failed to respond to the treatment.
All the other infants on the unit have now all been tested for the bug but the results will not be available until Monday.
A deep clean of the neonatal unit at Belfast’s Royal Maternity Hospital is under way as staff try to figure out the cause of the outbreak but top scientists say it is unlikely the source of the deadly infection will be identified.
Stephan Heeb, a senior research fellow at the School of Molecular Medical Sciences, said: 'The normal way to do it is to take swabs of surfaces. If they find it's heavily colonised in one area, that would be the source of the infection.
But that takes some days to do and sometimes it's not even worth trying to find it because the urgency is to end the problem, so in practice what is likely to happen is they will disinfect without actually identifying what the source is.'
He said the cause could be down to just one person not following the hospital's hygiene policy stipulating that everyone washes their hands.
Mr Heeb said: 'The hygiene practice is very difficult to maintain and you just need one person not following that.
'It can be someone bringing something in on their shoes.
'What can be done is to try and improve the hygiene conditions but these things will always happen and sooner or later a bacterium slips in so it's a bit difficult.
'It's very hard to have zero risk so these things will happen occasionally. It's important it doesn't happen frequently.'
Mr Heeb went on to explain that the pseudomonas bacteria needs water to survive and proliferate so its source is likely to be an area where fluids are present. But patients can carry the bacteria on their skin.
Pseudomonas is common and the biggest cause of death among cystic fibrosis patients although there are usually fewer than 80 cases of it annually in Northern Ireland
Burns victims and Aids sufferers are also susceptible to it, and babies at at risk because of their underdeveloped immune systems.
Mr Heeb added that babies in a neonatal unit who were not being breast-fed would not be receiving antibodies from their mother's milk and so would be even more susceptible.
The hospital has already cleared its large intensive care room, which holds up to 13 babies, and the infants moved into separate small rooms.
Two heavily pregnant women have been forced to make the 100-mile journey to Dublin to have their babies because of the outbreak.
Meanwhile, health officials have revealed a different - and apparently unlinked - strain of the infection also claimed the life of another baby in Altnagelvin hospital in Londonderry last month.
The infection was subsequently eradicated and they said there was no evidence to suggest it was linked to the strain that has hit the Royal’s maternity unit.
Northern Ireland Health Minister Edwin Poots stressed that the neonatal unit is the only part of the Belfast hospital affected by the pseudomonas outbreak.
Delivery wards and all other services at the hospital are operating as normal, and expectant mothers have been advised they should attend their appointments as scheduled.
Belfast Health and Social Care Trust chief executive Colm Donaghy said a full investigation into whether anything else could have been done will be carried out.
A helpline has also been set up for concerned parents.
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