The United Nations health agency said in a report issued on Tuesday that the number of cases infected by the deadly virus will rise to 20,000 by November without “drastic improvements in control measures.”

“We’ve rather modestly only extended the projections to November 2, but if you go to... January 2, you’re into hundreds of thousands,” said Christopher Dye, the director of strategy at the WHO.

The World Health Organization had said in an earlier report that more than 5,700 people have been infected with the deadly virus in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo and over 2,800 people have died from the disease.

Dye further noted that the epidemic of the fever might “rumble on as it has for the last few months for the next few years.”

The WHO official also said that the “fear is that Ebola will become more or less a permanent feature of the human population.”

The UN health agency says the Ebola outbreak has more or less been contained in Senegal and Nigeria and it will take at least six months to be brought under control.

Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces or sweat. It can also be spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.