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Two of the West African nations hardest hit by Ebola were bracing for new caseloads on Monday after trying to outflank the outbreak with a nationwide checkup and a large new clinic, The Associated Press reported.

Sierra Leone was expected to announce a sharp increase in Ebola patients Tuesday following a nationwide effort to identify new cases, while Liberia opened its largest treatment center yet.

Both countries have poor health systems, weakened by the loss to Ebola of many of doctors and nurses. The World Health Organization estimated last week that they have only about 20 percent of the beds they need to treat Ebola patients.

Still, identifying the sick is fundamental to containing the disease, and Sierra Leone went to an extreme unseen since the plague ravaged Europe during the Middle Ages, ordering an entire nation's people to remain at home while teams went door to door handing out soap and information.

More than 1 million households were checked for Ebola and told how to prevent its spread, authorities said.

Officials had previously predicted that they would find hundreds of new cases during the three-day shutdown, and government spokesman Abdulai Bayraytay said Sierra Leone was preparing tents for use as temporary treatment centers before announcing their findings on Tuesday.

In Liberia, meanwhile, ambulances rushed to fill the nation's largest new treatment center, a 150-bed hospital on the outskirts of Monrovia that opened on Sunday, run by the Health Ministry, WHO and a team of Ugandan doctors.

By Monday, the new clinic had admitted 112 people, though only 46 of those have tested positive for Ebola, said Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah. The rest were being held for observation and treated for other diseases, like malaria.