Here are the facts about how Ebola spreads, as outlined by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other official bodies.

You cannot get Ebola through the air

Ebola is not an airborne disease like influenza or chicken pox, and the WHO has categorically said reports suggesting that Ebola has mutated and become airborne are false.

"Airborne spread among humans implies inhalation of an infectious dose of virus from a suspended cloud of small dried droplets," it says.

"This mode of transmission has not been observed during extensive studies of the Ebola virus over several decades."

You cannot get Ebola through water

Ebola does not contaminate water supplies like cholera or dysentery do.

You cannot get Ebola from someone who is not already sick

The virus only appears in people's bodily fluids after they already have symptoms, so a carrier can't unknowingly spread it before they feel sick.

"The time from exposure to when signs or symptoms of the disease appear - the incubation period - is two to 21 days but the average time is eight to 10 days," the CDC says.

"Signs of Ebola include fever - higher than 38.6 degrees Celsius - and symptoms like severe headache, muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, or unexplained bleeding or bruising."

You cannot get Ebola from mosquitos

It isn't carried by insects the way dengue fever or Ross River fever are.

"There is no evidence that mosquitos or other insects can transmit Ebola virus," the CDC says. "Only mammals - for example, humans, bats, monkeys and apes - have shown the ability to spread and become infected with Ebola virus."





You cannot get Ebola from properly cooked food

Although Ebola has spread through the hunting, butchering and preparation of bush meat in Africa, it can't be transmitted through properly cooked food.

"If food products are properly prepared and cooked, humans cannot become infected by consuming them: the Ebola virus is inactivated through cooking," the WHO advises.

You can get Ebola from direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infectious person

This is the main method of transmission.

You can get Ebola if the blood, saliva, sweat, vomit, urine, semen or other bodily fluids of a sick person comes into direct contact with your broken skin or mucous membranes such as the mouth, nose, eyes or vagina.

Therefore, activities such as kissing, sharing food or having sex with an infectious person all provide potential for transmission. Needles are also a risk factor.

With Ebola, the most infectious bodily fluids are blood, faeces and vomit.

"The viral load in these fluids is enormous," notes Dominic Dwyer, the director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases in Sydney.

This means that healthcare workers who are treating Ebola patients, and the family and friends of infected people, are at the highest risk of getting sick.

If a person recovers from Ebola - the fatality rate in the current outbreak is about 70 per cent - sexual contact can remain risky.

"Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to seven weeks after recovery from illness," the WHO says.

You can get Ebola from touching an infected surface

The Ebola virus can survive outside the body, so coming into direct contact with infected bodily fluids on surfaces such as bedding, clothing or furniture and then touching your eyes or mouth can spread the disease.

"Ebola is killed with hospital-grade disinfectants, such as household bleach," the CDC says.

"Ebola on dried on surfaces such as doorknobs and countertops can survive for several hours, however [the] virus in body fluids such as blood can survive up to several days at room temperature."

The virus can also survive on the skin of an infected person for several days, even after their death. The UK's National Health Service says this has meant traditional African burial rituals have played a part in Ebola's spread.

"The Ebola virus can survive for several days outside the body, including on the skin of an infected person, and it's common practice for mourners to touch the body of the deceased," the NHS says. "They only then need to touch their mouth to become infected."

You can (theoretically) get Ebola if an infectious person sneezes on you

"Common sense and observation tell us that spread of the virus via coughing or sneezing is rare, if it happens at all," the WHO says.

"Theoretically, wet and bigger droplets from a heavily infected individual, who has respiratory symptoms caused by other conditions or who vomits violently, could transmit the virus – over a short distance – to another nearby person.

"This could happen when virus-laden heavy droplets are directly propelled, by coughing or sneezing (which does not mean airborne transmission) onto the mucus membranes or skin with cuts or abrasions of another person.

"WHO is not aware of any studies that actually document this mode of transmission. On the contrary, good quality studies from previous Ebola outbreaks show that all cases were infected by direct close contact with symptomatic patients."

You can get Ebola from infected wild animals

In Africa, Ebola has spread to humans who eat infected wild animals without properly cooking them, or who otherwise come into contact with the bodily fluids of infected wild animals.

"It is thought that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are natural Ebola virus hosts," the WHO says.

"Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest."

Also: viruses don't typically just 'go airborne'

In case you missed it, it bears repeating that Ebola is not an airborne disease.

The WHO also says viruses are not known for suddenly "becoming airborne", as some reports suggest Ebola has done.

"Scientists are unaware of any virus that has dramatically changed its mode of transmission," the WHO says.

"For example, the H5N1 avian influenza virus, which has caused sporadic human cases since 1997, is now endemic in chickens and ducks in large parts of Asia.

"That virus has probably circulated through many billions of birds for at least two decades. Its mode of transmission remains basically unchanged.

"Speculation that Ebola virus disease might mutate into a form that could easily spread among humans through the air is just that: speculation, unsubstantiated by any evidence."

Dr Dwyer from Sydney's Centre for Infectious Diseases says the pace of the current Ebola outbreak is in itself evidence that the disease is not airborne.

"The 'slowness' of spread in the current Ebola outbreak is against respiratory transmission being a major factor: the 2009 pandemic influenza virus, spread by respiratory droplets, had become worldwide in a comparable timeframe," he explains.

Numerous reports and social media posts have cited a 2012 study that found Ebola spread from pigs to monkeys without any direct contact as evidence the virus has "gone airborne".

However, the Canadian scientists behind that study themselves said the form of transmission they observed was not similar to influenza or other infections.

"If it was really an airborne virus like influenza is it would spread all over the place, and that's not happening," Dr Gary Kobinger from the Public Health Agency in Canada told the BBC in 2012.

"What we suspect is happening is large droplets - they can stay in the air, but not long, they don't go far," he explained.

"But they can be absorbed in the airway and this is how the infection starts, and this is what we think, because we saw a lot of evidence in the lungs of the non-human primates that the virus got in that way."

Oh, and Ebola zombies aren't real either

This image, said to be a man who came back to life after dying from Ebola, has gone viral. The story is not true.

Reports that three people who died from Ebola later rose from the dead have spread widely across social media: one report alone has been shared more than 500,000 times on Twitter and Facebook.

It really should go without saying, but it is not real.

Snopes, the Independent, the Huffington Post and many, many others have the full debunking.

But honestly, there are better things to do with your time. Like go find out more about some real mental health issues.