Ebola outreak: Liberia extends stay-home order for civil servants

Liberia has suffered most deaths in outbreak in 5 West African countries that has killed over 1,500

Health workers, including ones outside a home of a man they believed died from Ebola in Monrovia, Liberia, on Friday, have been working overtime for weeks. Liberia has recorded the most Ebola-linked deaths of the 1,500 in five West African countries, and the president on Monday ordered civil servants to stay home another month. (Abbas Dulleh/Associated Press)

Liberia's president ordered most civil servants to stay home another month in an effort to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, according to a statement released today.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf ordered non-essential workers not to go to work and promised that all government workers would still be paid.

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Liberia's schools are already closed in the effort to keep large numbers of people from gathering and potentially spreading the disease.

The World Health Organization says up to 20,000 people may contract the virus before it is put under control, and that it could take six months to do so.

More than 1,500 have died across West Africa from Ebola.

Ebola in Senegal

Liberia has suffered the most deaths in the outbreak that has hit five West African countries.

On Friday, Senegal announced its first case. 

The WHO said a student from Guinea arrived in Dakar by road on Aug. 20 and was staying with relatives "in the outskirts of the city."

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It said that on Aug. 23, he went to a medical facility seeking treatment for fever, diarrhea and vomiting, all symptoms of Ebola.

He was treated for malaria and continued to stay with his relatives before turning up at the Dakar hospital on Aug. 26. 

Meanwhile, medical authorities have ruled out Ebola in a Swedish manwho was being tested at a hospital in Stockholm.

The man, whose name was not disclosed, was admitted to the isolation unit at Karolinska University Hospital on the weekend because he had travelled to a "risk area" for the virus and was suffering from fever.