Health officials are now requesting that male Ebola survivors avoid unprotected sex indefinitely in light of new information.

A Liberian woman who fell ill in March with Ebola died a week later. Just days prior to that she reported having sex with a male Ebola survivor who started showing signs of the infection last September. Now scientists are led to believe that the virus could remain active in semen much longer than previously thought, according to Daily Mail.

Surviving male Ebola patients were originally told not to have unprotected sex for three months after infection. The recent case in West Africa has doctors warning the male patients to not have unprotected sex, indefinitely.

The Ebola virus is spread only through direct contact with the infected patient’s blood or other bodily fluids like sweat, saliva, urine and semen. Although health officials are saying they are no longer contagious once fully recovered, new tests are showing that it could still be in there semen long after recovery.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the investigators of Ebola cases in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have found that there is sexual transmission from survivors. There have been less than 10 cases of this confirmed, but CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said it is hard to actually prove that sex was the way people have been infected.

With this new information, there is a fear spreading that eradicating the virus might be harder than what they previously thought. The fear is even stronger in countries that do not have a lot of accessibility to contraceptives.

The World Health Organization reports that 26,298 people have been infected so far with Ebola in West Africa. Of that number, 10,892 have died. Over 850 health workers have been infected with the virus, with over 500 of that number having died from it.