Liberia announced plans Sunday for a huge increase in beds for Ebola patients in its overwhelmed capital Monrovia, raising the number from around 250 to 1,000 by the end of October.

The move comes two weeks after the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned the country, worst-hit in the regional outbreak, with more than 1,450 deaths, would soon face thousands of new cases.

"Patients are being rejected... because there is no space. So the government is trying its best to finish the 1,000 beds so we can accommodate all the patients," Information Minister Lewis Brown told AFP.

"That way, we will curtail the spread because those who are rejected go back to their communities where they can possibly infect other people," he said.

The announcement came ahead of the opening of a 150-bed unit, the largest government facility in the country, on Sunday in the western suburb of Duala.

The latest WHO figures show Liberia reporting 2,710 cases, but they were given a week ago, and the government's two Ebola units in Monrovia say they have been deluged by patients in recent days.

The centres currently provide 100-120 beds, with aid agency Doctors Without Borders offering a further 260-70.

The deadliest Ebola epidemic the world has ever seen is spreading across west Africa, with Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the worst affected nations.

The fever that the virus causes can fell its victims within days, causing severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and -- in some cases -- unstoppable internal and external bleeding.

Begging for their lives

The death toll has topped 2,600 across west Africa, out of more than 5,300 people infected.

The agency says the number of new cases is moving far faster than the capacity to manage them in Ebola-specific treatment centres.

Two weeks ago it called for key development partners trying to help Liberia respond to the outbreak "to prepare to scale up their current efforts by three- to four-fold".

An Ebola treatment facility hastily improvised by WHO for the Ministry of Health, was recently set up to manage 30 patients, but had more than 70 patients as soon as it opened, the WHO said.

"In Monrovia, taxis filled with entire families, of whom some members are thought to be infected with the Ebola virus, crisscross the city, searching for a treatment bed. There are none," the agency said.

"As WHO staff in Liberia confirm, no free beds for Ebola treatment exist anywhere in the country."

In Monrovia aid workers have reported having to take on the grim task of turning away patients who were begging for their lives.

When patients are turned away at Ebola treatment centres, they generally return to their communities and homes, where they infect others, perpetuating constantly higher flare-ups in the number of cases, the WHO says.

"I am here since this morning, I was here yesterday and the day before, but they keep telling me to go and come back," Fatima Bonoh, 35, told AFP on Sunday, shivering at the entrance of the Redemption hospital, an Ebola referral unit.