A terrifying prediction from health workers trying to contain the West African Ebola Outbreak:  The UN World Health Organization (WHO) says the killer virus is spreading so fast in Liberia, that many thousands of new cases are expected over the coming three weeks.

“Transmission of the Ebola virus in Liberia is already intense and the number of new cases is increasing exponentially,” the WHO said in a statement.

More than 2,100 people have died of Ebola in Guinea, Sierra Leonecareerspot, Liberia, Nigeria, and Senegal.  But by far, the worst situation is in Liberia, which has had almost half of all of this year’s Ebola deaths.  The WHO says it needs a thousand or more beds for infected patients in just one county, but only 240 are available.  That’s led to people actually being turned away from Ebola treatment centers.

“As soon as a new Ebola treatment facility is opened, it immediately fills to overflowing with patients, pointing to a large but previously invisible caseload,” read the WHO statement.  “When patients are turned away... they have no choice but to return to their communities and homes, where they inevitably infect others.”  Now, the taxis being used to transport people back and forth have emerged as sources of infection.

Unlike in past epidemics, Ebola is reappearing in places where it had been cleared.  The problem is that West Africa is a mobile, densely populated area with large urban centers.  Guinea’s Macenta area had been free of new cases, because many had gone to Liberia to seek treatment.  Now, with Liberia’s health system collapsing, people are coming back with fresh Ebola infections.

“The epidemic is now so vast and so extensive that one should consider that in the three (hardest-hit) countries, everybody is now at risk and it won't be over until the last case has survived and six weeks have passed,” said Dr. Peter Piot, the doctor who discovered Ebola in the 1970s.  Piot now runs London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The West African Ebola Outbreak has a mortality rate of about 55 percent.  It’s spread from person to person by bodily fluids – all of them.  The Ebola virus causes a hemorrhagic fever that causes diarrhea, nausea, tissue breakdown, and massive bleeding – the patient effectively liquefies into death.