The Ebola outbreak raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo is growing “exponentially”, with more than 2,500 deaths now recorded, with half in the last 20 days, the United Nations’ senior Ebola coordinator said Friday.

The Ebola outbreak is already the biggest in the country’s history and is spreading faster than any outbreak on record.

According to the latest figures, the virus eruption is “growing exponentially,” Julien Harneis told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Bunia, at the epicentre of the outbreak.

He said that in the last three months, “more than 2,500 people” had died, “and half of those in the last 20 days”.

“The epidemic is spreading widely. It’s now covering an area that is bigger than France…. It is growing faster and wider than the Ebola response.”

Declared on May 15, the DRC’s 17th Ebola outbreak is thought to have already been spreading for several weeks by that point.

It has hit regions in the north and east where the presence of the state is weak, health infrastructure is largely lacking and myriad armed groups have roamed for decades.

Harneis stressed the need to ramp up the response, insisting that “if we provide more staffing, if we get more resources into remote areas across … the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, within months we can slow the transmission and move to stopping it.

“If we do not, … then this epidemic will become more deadly. It will spread wider and it risks to spread into neighbouring countries.”