A total of 978 people have been killed by the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, the United Nations said on Monday.

So far 18,413 suspected cases have been reported in different regions of the country, with a case fatality rate of 5.3 percent, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ( OCHA) in a latest update.

The disease broke out in August. The number of cases could finally surpass 60,000, according estimates by the World Health Organization.