Ebola cases could rise to 6,800 in West Africa by end of September

A new study has revealed that new Ebola cases could reach 6,800 in West Africa by the end of the month if new control measures are not enacted.

According to researchers at Arizona State University and Harvard University, the rate of rise in cases significantly increased in August in Liberia and Guinea, around the time that a mass quarantine was put in place, indicating that the mass quarantine efforts may have made the outbreak worse than it would have been otherwise.

Sherry Towers, research professor for the ASU Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modelling Sciences Center said that there may be other reasons for the worsening of the outbreak spread, including the possibility that the virus has become more transmissible, but it's also possible that the quarantine control efforts actually made the outbreak spread more quickly by crowding people together in unsanitary conditions.

The study was published in the online journal PLoS Outbreaks.