The death toll from the Ebola outbreak sweeping through west African countries has risen to 1,427 out of more than 2,600 cases, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The latest tally, which counts the number of victims from March when the deadly disease first reared its head to August 20, found that 77 people had succumbed to the virus on Tuesday and Wednesday. The previous death toll was 1,350.

Guinea on Saturday said it was closing its land borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone in a bid to halt the spread of the deadly Ebola virus which has claimed hundreds of lives in the three west African countries.

"In order to better control contact" with people suspected of carrying the Ebola virus, "Guinea has decided to temporarily close its land borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone," government spokesman Albert Damantang Camara said.

The government of Sierra Leone has deployed hundreds of troops Ebola clinics, to enforce the isolation of patients, the president's office said on Tuesday.

A presidential aide told Agence France Presse the soldiers would "deter relatives and friends of suspected and Ebola patients from forcefully taking them from hospitals without medical consent".

A former government minister in Sierra Leone said on Tuesday that he has lost nine members of his family to the Ebola epidemic raging in west Africa.

Lansana Nyallah told state television the dead included his brothers and sisters in the eastern village of Daru, at the epicenter of the outbreak.

The World Health Organization said Monday the death toll from the Ebola epidemic in west Africa has now reached 887 after 61 more fatalities recorded at the end of last week.

Giving an update on the deadly virus -- the worst Ebola outbreak ever -- the U.N. health agency said the 61 deaths were reported between last Thursday and Friday in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

With 20,000 citizens living in three countries affected by an Ebola outbreak, Lebanon is taking a series of measures to prevent the virus reaching its shores, government officials said Friday.

Health Minister Wael Abu Faour, during a tour of Beirut airport, said the ministry "has asked all airlines, particularly those bringing people from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, to inform Lebanese authorities about anyone displaying suspicious symptoms."

A doctor in charge of an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone has been admitted to hospital after contracting the deadly virus himself, the health ministry said Wednesday.

The news comes just days after three nurses from the same facility died of the disease, which has killed hundreds of people throughout west Africa and continues to spread.

The number of people believed to have died from Ebola in west Africa has jumped to 518, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The U.N. health agency said that 50 new cases -- 25 of them fatal -- had been reported between July 3-6 by health authorities in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Many cases of Ebola in Sierra Leona may be going undetected, grassroots doctors warned in The Lancet on Saturday as they highlighted the impoverished country's problems in combating the virus.

The journal published the letter on the heels of ministerial talks in Ghana, where a senior U.N. health official on Thursday said the outbreak in West Africa, the worst in the history of Ebola, may persist for several more months.

Sierra Leone, one of three neighboring west African countries facing an Ebola epidemic, has stepped up measures to fight the highly contagious and deadly disease, the health minister has said.

Miatta Kargbo said Thursday that the number of registered cases of hemorrhagic fever had risen to 246. Of these, 103 were confirmed to be Ebola and 26 had died.