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As the death toll from Ebola reaches 3,800, experts are warning that the virus could mutate and become airborne, meaning that it could be caught by breathing it in, the Daily Mail reports.

The public is being told by health officials that the virus that causes Ebola cannot be transmitted through the air and can only be spread through direct contact with bodily fluids – blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen – of an infected person who is showing symptoms.

However, several leading Ebola researchers claim that the virus mutating and spreading through the air should not be ruled out.

Virus expert Charles L. Bailey, who in 1989 helped the American government tackle an outbreak of Ebola among rhesus monkeys being used for research, told the LA Times: 'We know for a fact that the virus occurs in sputum and no one has ever done a study [disproving that] coughing or sneezing is a viable means of transmitting.

Unqualified assurances that Ebola is not spread through the air are "misleading."

Dr C J Peters, who has undertaken research into Ebola for America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the paper: 'We just don't have the data to exclude it [becoming airborne].'

Meanwhile virologist Dr Philip K Russell, a former head of the U.S Army's Medical Research and Development Command, told the paper: 'I see the reasons to dampen down public fears. But scientifically, we're in the middle of the first experiment of multiple, serial passages of Ebola virus in man.... God knows what this virus is going to look like. I don't.'