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The Ebola virus outbreak has killed more than 2,500 people in West Africa while 5,000 were infected, the World Health Organisation's assistant director-general Bruce Aylward said on Tuesday, according to ITAR-TASS.

A senior UN coordinator for Ebola David Nabarro said Tuesday $1 billion is now needed to fight against the deadly Ebola virus.

"The amount for which we requested was about $100 million a month ago and now it is $1 billion, so our ask has gone up 10 times in a month," Nabarro said.

As the Ebola outbreak is advancing, “the level of surge we need to do is unprecedented, it is massive," he added.

Almost 40% of new infection cases happened in the past 21 days, the UN said. The mortality rate in the affected countries is estimated at around 60 or 70%, the organization said.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 22.4 million people currently live in the areas where the virus is being actively transmitted.

The Ebola virus outbreak has killed more than 2,500 people in West Africa while 5,000 were infected, the World Health Organization’s assistant director-general Bruce Aylward said on Tuesday. Most of those killed by the disease are in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

WHO officials expect several thousand more cases in Liberia over the next three weeks.