Liberia has found all 17 suspected Ebola patients who fled a quarantine centre in Monrovia at the weekend and transferred them to another clinic, the country's information minister said on Tuesday.

"We are glad to confirm that all of the 17 individuals have been accounted for and have now been transferred to JFK Ebola specialist treatment centre," said Lewis Brown.

He also said three infected African doctors who had received the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp were showing "remarkable signs of improvement", quoting an assessment by the doctor overseeing their treatment.

The Ebola virus killed 84 people in just three days, bringing the global death toll to 1,229, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. The number of confirmed infections jumped by 113 from last Thursday to Saturday, bringing the total number of cases to 2,240, the UN health agency said.

The epidemic, which has hit four west African countries since it broke out in Guinea at the start of the year, is by far the deadliest since Ebola was discovered four decades ago in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Latest figures show Liberia has been hardest-hit, with 48 new cases and 53 deaths. That lifted its total count of cases to 834, with 466 deaths. The new WHO figures predate an attack overnight on Saturday on a Monrovia quarantine centre that caused 17 suspected Ebola patients to flee.

Sierra Leone recorded 38 new infections and 17 fatalities, the WHO said. As a result, its total case count increased to 848 and its death toll to 365.

Guinea counted 24 new cases and 14 new deaths. That lifted the total number of cases to 543, with 394 deaths.

Nigeria, meanwhile, recorded three new cases but no deaths. Nigeria has now seen 15 cases and four fatalities, according to the data.