Virologist: Fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia is lost

The killer virus is spreading like wildfire, Liberia's defense minister said on Tuesday as he pleaded for UN assistance. A German Ebola expert tells DW the virus will "burn itself out" in that part of the world.

His statement might alarm many people.

But Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg told DW that he and his colleagues are losing hope for Sierra Leone and Liberia, two of the countries worst hit by the recent Ebola epidemic.

"The right time to get this epidemic under control in these countries has been missed," he said. That time was May and June. "Now it is too late."

Schmidt-Chanasit expects the virus will "burn itself out" in this part of the world.

With other words: It will more or less infect everybody and half of the population - in total about five million people - could die.