WHO expects 20,000 Ebola cases within six weeks

BOSTON, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Ebola cases in West Africa could reach 20,000 by early November unless infection control protocols are put in place, a report released Tuesday warned.

Researchers of the United Nations' World Health Organization and Britain's Imperial College said in a New England Journal of Medicine article that Ebola infections would increase exponentially unless patients are isolated and entire communities are involved in halting the spread of the virus.

The current death toll is at least 2,811, and 5,864 cases have been reported, largely in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the U.N. said.

"With exponential growth, you'll see that the case numbers per week go up so that by the second of November, over these three countries our best estimate is over 20,000 cases, confirmed and suspected cases," said Dr. Christopher Dye, WHO strategy director and co-author of article.

Dye added that if controls are only partially successful Ebola could be "a permanent feature of life in West Africa. The alternative possibility that we're talking about is that the epidemic simply rumbles on as it has for the last few months for the next few years, on the order of years, rather than months. Under those circumstances, the fear is that Ebola will be more or less a permanent feature of the human population."

The article's comments come after a Warwick University, England, study predicted an accelerated rate of Ebola infection, and an estimate by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated as many as 500,000 people in West Africa could be infected by the new year.