Fresh data from the UN health agency showed that the number of deaths in Guinea, the hardest-hit country, has reached 264, while 49 had died in Sierra Leone and 24 in Liberia.
The new toll marks a more than 60-percent hike since the WHO's last figure on June 4th, when it said 208 people had succumbed to the deadly virus.
Including the deaths, 528 people across the three countries have contracted Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, the WHO said.
A majority of cases, 398 of them, have surfaced in Guinea, where west Africa's first ever Ebola outbreak began in January.
Sierra Leone has registered 97 cases in total, while Liberia has seen 33.
WHO has described the epidemic as one of the most challenging since the virus was first identified in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
That outbreak, until now the deadliest, killed 280 people, according to WHO figures.
Ebola is a tropical virus that can fell its victims within days, causing severe fever and muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea — in some cases shutting down organs and causing unstoppable bleeding.
No medicine or vaccine exists for Ebola, which is named after a small river in the DRC.
Aid organizations have said the current outbreak has been especially challenging since people in many affected areas have been reluctant to cooperate with aid workers and due to the practice of moving the dead to be buried in other villages.
West African authorities have also been struggling to stop mourners from touching bodies during traditional funeral rituals.
WHO
Ebola death toll rises in west Africa: WHO
The death toll in west Africa's three-nation Ebola outbreak has risen to 337, the Geneva-based World Health Organization said Wednesday, making it the deadliest ever outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever.
ANGELA MERKEL
WHO to set up pandemic data hub in Berlin
The World Health Organization announced Wednesday it would set up a global data hub in Berlin to analyse information on emerging pandemic threats, filling the gaps exposed by Covid-19.
The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, which will start operating later this year, is set to analyse data quickly and in detail, in order to predict, prevent, detect, prepare for and respond to risks worldwide.
The hub will try to get ahead of the game, looking for pre-signals that go far beyond current systems that monitor publicly available information for signs of emerging outbreaks.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed gaps in the global systems for pandemic and epidemic intelligence,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists.
“There will be more viruses that will emerge with the potential for sparking epidemics or pandemics.
“Viruses move fast. But data can move even faster. With the right information, countries and communities can stay one step ahead of an emerging risk and save lives.”
READ ALSO: ‘We are still in the third wave’: German Health Minister urges caution in reopening after shutdown
Merging digital, health expertise
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin was a good location for the hub as it already had leading players in the digital and health fields, such as the Robert Koch Institute.
“If that expertise is now supplemented by the WHO Hub, we will create a unique environment for pandemic and health research here in Berlin – an environment from which important action-oriented insights will emerge for governments and leaders around the world,” she said in a video message.
It is hoped that the site will be operational from September. Its budget is still under discussion, while Germany will meet the start-up costs.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn said the world needed the capacity to detect outbreaks with the potential to become health crises “before the threat becomes a sad reality”.
Global systems were currently “insufficiently prepared” to handle the risks posed by outbreaks, mutations of existing pathogens, extensions of diseases to previously unaffected populations, and diseases jumping species from animals to humans, he added.
“There’s a clear need for a stronger global early warning alert and emergency response system with improved public health intelligence,” he said.
“Better data and better analytics are key for better decisions.”
Looking for pre-signals
“There are signals that may occur before epidemics happen… data that can give us pre-signals,” said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan. That information could drive early decision-making, he added.
“The Hub will allow us to develop tools for that sort of predictive analytics,” he said.
A joint mission by international and Chinese scientists concluded in March that the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19 disease most likely passed to humans from a bat via an intermediary animal.
The experts’ report suggested the outbreak could have started as far back as September 2019, long before it was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan.
The WHO only became aware of the new coronavirus on December 31st that year, when its epidemic intelligence service and its China office spotted a media report and a mention by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission of a mysterious cluster of pneumonia cases.
The Covid-19 pandemic has killed at least 3.2 million people and more than 154 million cases have been registered worldwide since then, according to tallies from official sources compiled by AFP.
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