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The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) has warned that if uncontrolled, the Ebola outbreak could infect anywhere between 550,000 and 1.4 million people in Sierra Leone and Liberia alone, by end of next January.

The estimates were released on Tuesday by CDC in a report which also said that by end of this month, the number of infections could touch 21,000 in West Africa. Currently, an estimated 5,800 people have been infected, of which 2,800 have died. CDC's estimates were seen to be more pessimistic than WHO's earlier estimates of 20,000 infections by middle of next year, Fox News reported.

The first cases of Ebola were reported in February this year in Guinea. The virus rapidly spread to neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia, which has been the worst affected country accounting for more than half the infections and deaths. Without cure or vaccine, the number of infections in these two countries have been increasing exponentially while the outbreak in Nigeria and Senegal are said to be contained. Healthcare facilities in the two nations, considered amongst the poorest, have crumbled under the siege of outbreak. Hospitals are facing shortage of supplies, beds and soap are on ration. Experimental drug Zmapp has shown success in non-human primates even as UK tested the first Ebola vaccine recently. New initiatives are being worked for speeding up clinical drugs of experimental drugs to ensure quick availability.

Though health experts have called for greater response to contain the worst-ever epidemic since Ebola's isolation in 1976, they termed CDC estimates pessimistic.

"It's a big assumption that nothing will change in the current outbreak response. Ebola outbreaks usually end when people stop touching the sick. The outbreak is not going to end tomorrow but there are things we can do to reduce the case count," Dr. Armand Sprecher, an infectious diseases specialist at Doctors without Borders told ABC News.