The number of people infected with the Ebola virus in the three countries worst affected by the outbreak has passed 20,000, with more than 7,842 deaths in the epidemic so far, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday. WHO said in a statement that cumulative case numbers in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea stood at 20,081. More than a third are laboratory-confirmed cases in Sierra Leone, which has become the worst-hit country in the worst outbreak of the disease on record.