WHO: Ebola Cases Could Reach 20,000 by Nov, Killing 70% of Victims

Ebola is the disease that won’t be contained.

Today, the World Health Organizatin issue its more dire prediction so far. Unless huge improvements in control measures, the number of victims could reach 20,000 by November. WHO also revised the mortality rate, saying that 70% of those who contracted the disease will die from it. This is an increase from the previous estimate of a 50% mortality rate.

The paper, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine also says that its possible that Ebola may become “endemic among the human population of West Africa.

Ebola is pared by close contact with an infected person or with their bodily fluids. It is much easier to catch the flu from another person than Ebola.

The usual first symptoms are fever and fatigue. The disease has a incubation period of 11 days and people are not infectious until they begin to have symptoms.

From NBC News:

World Health Organization researchers issued a dire new forecast for the Ebola epidemic Tuesday, one that sees 20,000 cases by November, much sooner than previous estimates. And 70 percent of patients are dying.

That’s a big increase over the previous estimates of a 50 percent fatality rate.

“These data indicate that without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers of cases of and deaths from Ebola virus disease are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months,” the WHO Ebola Response Team, led by Dr. Christopher Dye, wrote in a report rushed into print by the New England Journal of Medicine.

This projection includes nearly 10,000 people in Liberia alone. WHO said earlier Monday that more than 5,800 people had been infected with Ebola and more than 2,800 had died of it since the virus first broke out in Guinea in December.

And it’s likely far worse, especially in Liberia, WHO says. “The true number of deaths will likely never be known, as bodies in the notoriously poor, filthy and overcrowded West Point slum, in the capital, Monrovia, have simply been thrown into the two nearby rivers,” WHO said in a separate statement.