The World Health Organization has chosen for distribution a short 15-minute test for Ebola that significantly reduced the time it takes to find out - with enough precision - whether a person is a carrier of the fatal virus.

Colorado-based manufacturer Corgenix has rolled out the ReEBOV Antigen Rapid Test Kit, which met enough performance and safety standards to be bought and distributed by United Nations aid agencies and organizations, WHO said.

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WHO's assistant director-general, Dr. Bruce Aylward , the test kit may not be a game-changer but it will adequately help the campaign against the Ebola spread.

Before the new kit, tests for Ebola have been confined to laboratories. The gene-based ones are more accurate but they take 12 to 24 hours.

The new Ebola test can ring up results within a dozen minutes by zeroing in on an Ebola protein. In clinical trials, it accurately flagged 92 percent of Ebola-infected patients and 85 percent of the virus-free group.

Field health staff would still have to perform a secondary test when someone is marked negative, a WHO official said. But the new test might help efforts to get to zero infection faster.

So far, nearly 24,000 people have been infected with Ebola and almost 9,400 have lost their lives due to the spread of the viral illness, which started in West Africa more than a year ago.

A huge worldwide effort to contain the disease was began last year in the three most affected nations - Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. A WHO official said the campaign was partly successful but there has been a sudden rise in the number of infected people in the past weeks.

In China, clinical trials are underway for a locally researched Ebola vaccine that will be managed by a logistical unit of the People's Liberation Army.

Scientists worldwide are now in a race to come up with an Ebola vaccine since the worst outbreak of the virus has claimed over 6,000 lives in West Africa last year year.

A local official said the new vaccine would be the third Ebola vaccine to start clinical trials after Canadian and American vaccines.