Ebola virus has already cost the lives of 2500 people in West Africa. The epidemic began in Guinea in December 2013 and then spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.

Now the experts reveal a new ‘nightmare scenario’, according to which the deadly virus could become airborne and spread across the planet if the epidemic is not brought under control fast enough.

More specifically, Anthony Banbury, Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Ebola told The Telegraph that “aid workers are racing against time to bring the epidemic under control, in case the Ebola virus mutates and becomes even harder to deal with.”

“The longer it moves around in human hosts in the virulent melting pot that is West Africa, the more chances increase that it could mutate,” Banbury stated. “It is a nightmare scenario, and unlikely, but it can’t be ruled out.”

The UN Coordinator for Ebola acknowledged that the international community had been a bit late to respond to the epidemic. However, he underlined that it was “not too late” for the aid workers to “hit the virus hard”.

Banbury is not the first expert to express fears about Ebola becoming airborne. Only last month Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, warned in a piece in the New York Times that viruses similar to Ebola are notorious for replicating and reinventing themselves.

However, he underlined that experts avoid to discuss their concerns in public, for fear of whipping up hysteria.