WHO: Ebola vaccine trials in W. Africa in January

GENEVA, Switzerland - With Ebola raging in West Africa, the World Health Organization is pressing the search for a vaccine and hopes to test two experimental versions as early as January on 20,000 frontline health-care workers and others in the hot zone - a bigger rollout than envisioned just a few months ago.

An effective vaccine would not in itself be enough to stop the outbreak - for one thing, there probably won't be enough to go around - but it could give important protection to the medical workers who are central to the effort. More than 200 of them have died of the disease.

The WHO, which has come under fire for bungling its initial reaction to the Ebola crisis, is helping coordinate trials of two of the most promising experimental vaccines.

The "real-world" testing in West Africa will go forward only if the vaccines prove safe - and also trigger an adequate immune-system response in volunteers - during clinical trials that are either underway or planned in Europe, Africa and the United States, the WHO said. The preliminary safety data are expected to become available by December.

Marie Paule Kieny, an assistant director general for the U.N. health agency, acknowledged there are many "ifs" remaining - and "still a possibility that it will fail." But she sketched out a much broader experiment than was imagined only six months ago, saying WHO hopes to dispense tens of thousands of doses in the first couple of months of the new year. "These are quite large trials," she said Tuesday.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib later said the agency expects 20,000 vaccinations in January and similar numbers in the months after that.

The outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 4,500 people, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, since it emerged 10 months ago. Experts said the world could see 10,000 new cases a week in two months if authorities don't take stronger steps.

Meanwhile, a hospital in Nebraska said that an American video journalist being treated for Ebola is now free of the virus and will be released soon.

Ashoka Mukpo said in a statement that recovering from Ebola "is a truly humbling feeling."

Mukpo, of Providence, R.I., has been treated at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha since Oct. 6. He contracted Ebola while working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC and other media outlets.