NYTimes | The
World Health Organization reported sobering new figures Tuesday about
the Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa, saying the number of new cases
could reach 10,000 per week by December, about 10 times the rate of the
past four weeks.
While
the number of deaths so far is roughly half the number of confirmed,
probable or suspected cases, the organization also said that the
mortality rate is closer to 70 percent.
The updated figures were provided by Dr. Bruce Aylward, the health organization’s assistant director general, during a telephone news conference from its Geneva headquarters.
He
said that as of Tuesday, the total number of confirmed, probable or
suspected Ebola cases over the course of the epidemic had reached 8,914,
with 4,447 deaths. The vast majority are in the three most afflicted
countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Just
on Friday, the organization said that the deaths totaled 4,024 —
indicating that hundreds more people have died in a matter of days.
Dr.
Aylward, an infectious diseases specialist who just completed a visit
to West Africa, said the survival rate was now “30 percent at most in
these countries, ” even as the international campaign to fight it has
escalated.
The
epidemic has continued to expand geographically and now affects more
areas in the three countries than a month ago, including close to
Guinea’s border with Ivory Coast, Dr. Aylward said, and the number of
infections was still rising in the capitals of the three worst-hit
countries.
