The stark admission from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came as a Sierra Leone soldier tested positive for Ebola, although he is not a member of, and had no contact with, a battalion of peacekeepers waiting to deploy to Somalia, a government spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization projected the pace of infections accelerating in West Africa '€” to as many as 10,000 new cases a week within two months.

CDC Director Tom Frieden outlined a series of steps designed to stop the spread of the disease in the U.S., including increased training for health care workers and changes at the Texas hospital where the virus was diagnosed to minimize the risk of more infections.

The announcement of the effort came after top health officials repeatedly assured the public over the last two weeks that they were doing everything possible to control the outbreak by deploying infectious-disease specialists to the hospital where a Liberian man was diagnosed with Ebola and later died.

"I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the patient '€” the first patient '€” was diagnosed. That might have prevented this infection. But we will do that from today onward with any case anywhere in the U.S.," Frieden said.

Frieden described the new response team as having some of the world's leading experts in how to care for Ebola and protect health care workers. They planned to review everything from how the isolation room is physically laid out, to what protective equipment health workers use, to waste management and decontamination.

The Sierra-Leone soldier became ill while working at a military facility in Bengwema, and has been admitted to a military hospital, according to Abdulai Bayraytay, a spokesman with Sierra Leone's Ministry of Information.

Fear of Ebola's spread has already slowed the deployment of a battalion of Sierra Leone troops, who were supposed to relieve soldiers serving with an African Union mission to protect the Somali government and fight al-Shabab militants. The replacements' deployment was put on hold this summer when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa spiraled out of control.

It was unclear if the announcement of the Ebola case would throw the deployment into doubt.

"This one case has no contact absolutely with the 850 troops on standby," Bayraytay said.

In Europe, the WHO said the death rate in the outbreak has risen to 70 percent as it has killed nearly 4,500 people, most of them in West Africa. The previous mortality rate was about 50 percent.

Anthony Banbury, head of the United Nations mission for Ebola, told the U.N. Security Council that the current plan for fighting the outbreak won't be enough for the future crisis if the international community can't get ahead of the deadly disease in time.

Banbury also said he is "deeply, deeply worried" that all of the efforts so far will not be enough. "Ebola got a head start on us, is far ahead of us, is running faster than us and is winning the race," he said.

President Barack Obama, speaking at the end of a meeting with U.S. and allied military leaders, declared that the "the world is not doing enough" to fight Ebola.

"Everybody's going to have to do more than they are doing right now, he said.

Nina Pham, 26, became the first person to contract the disease on U.S. soil as she cared for Thomas Eric Duncan. Pham released a statement Tuesday through Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital saying she is "doing well," and the hospital listed her in good condition. The hospital CEO said medical staff members remain hopeful about her condition.

Among the changes announced Tuesday by Frieden was a plan to limit the number of health care workers who care for Ebola patients so they "can become more familiar and more systematic in how they put on and take off protective equipment, and they can become more comfortable in a healthy way with providing care in the isolation unit."

On Tuesday, Frieden said a total of 76 people at the hospital might have had exposure to Duncan, and all of them are being monitored for fever and other symptoms daily.

That figure confirmed an Associated Press report on Monday that Pham was among about 70 hospital staffers who were involved in Duncan's care after he was hospitalized, based on medical records provided by Duncan's family. (***)

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