Liberian officials have wrongly ascribed about 1,000 deaths in the West African country to the deadly Ebola virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

A surge in Ebola death toll, which was published by the UN organization at the weekend, arose from wrong attribution to the epidemic by Liberian authorities, the WHO assistant director general, Bruce Aylward, said on Monday.

"Liberia's figures came in but they've since said these were actually non-Ebola deaths that were reported as part of our Ebola deaths and we will be taking them off. So the whole world went up and the whole world will come down again," Aylward said.

The weekend’s statistics put the death toll in Liberia at 4,181, up from 3,016 two days earlier. However, the WHO's revised figures indicated the number of deaths recorded in the Ebola outbreak in the African country stands at 3,145.

The new data also classified Sierra Leone and Guinea with 1,530 and 1,312 deaths respectively as the worst-hit countries after Liberia.

The three states have suffered a total of 5,987 Ebola-related deaths, the figures showed.

Over 16,000 people have reportedly been infected with the deadly Ebola virus.

Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces, or sweat. It can also be spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses. There is currently no known cure for Ebola.