LONDON: Africa’s air routes are increasingly at risk as the Ebola virus prompts local carriers to avoid the worst-affected areas, demand weakens and Korean Air Lines halts services thousands of miles from the outbreak’s epicenter, signaling a broader threat to the continent’s travel links.

Airlines from Gambia, Togo and Nigeria have halted flights to Ebola-hit states, while Korean Air will end operations to Kenya on Aug. 20 after a World Health Organization official in the country, which has suffered zero Ebola cases, described it as “high risk” because of airline ties to the rest of Africa.

Among carriers with the greatest West African exposure, Air France and Brussels Airlines — Deutsche Lufthansa’s main link there — said hat they’re screening departing customers more carefully, while persisting with flights. Korean Air’s decision to scrap its only sub-Saharan route could herald a wider review of operations in the face of a disease that has killed more than 1,000 people.

“When you have long incubation periods it’s possible that someone would be exposed but not yet exhibiting symptoms and could travel unknowingly — aviation is a potential vector for this,” said Robert Mann, president of aviation consultant R.W. Mann & Co. Asian customers are especially conscious of personal security, which “causes a drop in willingness travel.”

Joanne Liu, international president of MSF (Doctors Without Borders), warns that it will take about six months to bring the Ebola epidemic under control.

He said the outbreak in West Africa felt like “wartime, is moving, advancing.” Liu, speaking in Geneva, after a 10-day trip to West Africa.

The death toll from the worst ever outbreak of Ebola has risen to 1,145, the World Health Organization said, as 76 new deaths were reported in the two days to August 13 in the four West African nations affected by the epidemic.

The UN health agency said that a total of 152 confirmed, probable and suspected new cases of the deadly hemorrhagic fever were reported in the two day period in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, bringing the total for the outbreak to 2,127.