The White House is seeking more than $1.4 billion in new funds from Congress to address the widening Ebola ‌virus outbreak, including $800 million for humanitarian crisis response, according to a Trump administration official.

The move is part of a larger supplemental funding request the White House made to Congress on Wednesday in a letter.

It includes $800 million for a quarantine centre in Kenya for Americans exposed to the virus, supplies, treatment, contact tracing, a regional logistics network ​and infection-control practices, the official said.

U.S. officials are also seeking $500 million in global health security funds, which they say are needed to prevent ​the virus from spreading to the United States.

That funding would include disease surveillance, laboratory capacity, cross-border coordination ⁠and potential partnerships with multilateral organisations and the private sector, the official said.

Another $90 million would go to diplomatic efforts, including evacuations and transportation of U.S. ​citizens with the virus to treatment facilities, according to the official.

Congressional aides said any such request could run into problems in Congress, where lawmakers, including ​some of President Donald Trump's fellow Republicans, are unhappy that his administration has been refusing to spend money allocated for foreign assistance, including medical care, around the world.

Washington has been criticised for its cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and African public health efforts, prior to the outbreak, which have hurt the response.

SERIOUS RESPONSE NEEDED

Congo's ​Ebola outbreak is linked to the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus. It has infected more than 1,000 people and killed 267 — generating the largest number ​of confirmed cases within the first month of any episode of the disease, the World Health Organisation said this week.

The two largest previous Ebola outbreaks occurred in West ‌Africa — in ⁠Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016 — and in Congo in 2018.

"This is a very serious outbreak, and so a very serious response is needed now," said Josh Michaud, a public health analyst with KFF, a health policy research group.

Michaud said $1.4 billion is probably in line with what is needed, adding that during the smaller DRC outbreak from 2018 to 2020, the United States spent about $266 million.

"The details matter here," he said, noting ​that part of the funding is ​earmarked for the controversial quarantine centre ⁠in Kenya for American citizens, which is aimed at preventing any cases of Ebola from reaching the United States.

The U.S. has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to the Ebola response so far. On June 18, the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said it would make $107 million in emergency funding available to strengthen its domestic and international response to the Ebola outbreak and warned that it could be the worst outbreak yet.

The U.S. has also provided doses of an experimental antibody drug for use in clinical trials to fight the widening outbreak, a shift from its position of making the drug available only to Americans.

In France, a doctor who recently returned from ⁠a humanitarian ​mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo has tested positive for Ebola, marking the European ​country's first confirmed case linked to the outbreak.

World Health Organisation Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference earlier on Wednesday that the risk of the virus spreading further was low.