KINSHASA, Congo — Congolese authorities have reported one of the highest daily increases in Ebola cases in a month-old outbreak as the virus spreads quickly in a remote region whose shifting population challenges efforts to find those exposed.

Congo’s Ministry of Health on Sunday said 72 new cases were reported in a 24-hour period, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 782. Those include 181 confirmed deaths, with 29 new ones.

“One month on, the Ebola disease outbreak is outpacing the response effort,” Kate White, emergency medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Congo, said Monday. “No one knows the true scale or exactly where the disease is spreading in Congo.”

The medical charity said treatment centers in the epicenter of the outbreak are overwhelmed, many patients arrive in advanced stages of illness and most were not identified as contacts of infected people before seeking care.

Congo’s health ministry said that while the numbers show the outbreak is spreading rapidly, it also reflects more active surveillance. “Community members are reporting suspected cases, and response teams are investigating them,” it said on X.

The number of cases in what could become history’s worst Ebola outbreak is believed to be higher because the outbreak was confirmed on May 15, weeks after it is suspected to have begun.

The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which was not tested for in the early days. The more common Zaire virus, which now has a vaccine, was responsible for most of Congo’s past 16 outbreaks of the disease.

The outbreak is concentrated in Congo’s eastern province of Ituri, which accounts for more than 90% of the cases. Cases have also been recorded in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces and have spread across the border to Uganda.

Congo said the contact tracing coverage rate is 56%, a sharp decrease from last week, as authorities hurry to find people who may have been exposed.

There was no immediate explanation for the drop. Congolese health authorities previously said contact tracing has been hampered by community resistance in some areas and by the rapid expansion of the outbreak into new health zones, increasing the workload for surveillance teams.

Nearly a million people have been displaced by years of conflict in Ituri, according to the U.N. humanitarian office, making contact tracing difficult as people flee attacks or move frequently in the vast province with dense forests, poor roads and remote villages that can take days to reach.

Tracing is also difficult among the thousands of miners who regularly move among remote sites in the mineral-rich region.

The health ministry said Sunday 40 people have recovered since the start of the outbreak, and the current fatality rate of the outbreak is 23%.

Life goes on, including nightlife, as the population adjusts.

The World Health Organization said Sunday it is intensifying testing and contact tracing and treatment. Tons of supplies from the WHO have arrived in Congo.

And Africa’s top health body said it is deploying technical expertise and supporting laboratory systems, case finding and community engagement efforts to accelerate the response.

“We remain committed to supporting affected countries until transmission is stopped. We call on partners and donors to urgently mobilize resources to strengthen the response and save lives,” said the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jean Kaseya.

UK bans under-16s from using social media apps including TikTok and YouTube

LONDON — Britain will ban children aged under 16 from using a range of social media apps, including Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, to protect them from harmful content and excessive screen time, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday.

The ban, which is expected to take effect early next year, makes the U.K. part of a growing global movement to tighten online safety for children. Australia, Canada, Brazil and Indonesia have introduced legislation or announced age-based restrictions or requirements for children’s access to social media. France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are among others studying or developing similar approaches.

“Every parent can see it with their own eyes. Social media is making children unhappy,” said Starmer, who has two teenage children. “I’ve heard first hand from families crying out for change and we will do right by them.”

The plan was met with mixed reaction, with some praising Starmer for taking action and others questioning the effectiveness of a blanket ban.

YouTube and Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — warned Monday that a blanket social media restriction could push kids into unregulated spaces.

“Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services,” a YouTube spokesperson said. Meta said a ban could drive teens to online alternatives without any parental controls.

Starmer acknowledged the challenges and said some teens would try to find their way around a ban, but said: “I do believe we can enforce it.”

He added: “Teenagers drink before they should, but we do not then say, ‘in which case let us abandon any attempt to stop them buying alcohol.'”

The prime minister — who is under pressure to step down from members of his own party over what they see as poor leadership and could face a challenge from within his Labour Party in the coming days or weeks — said he is “not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children.”

Starmer says the UK will go further than Australia

The U.K. plans to follow the same model for a social media ban as Australia, which last year became the first country to bar under-16s from holding social media accounts. Platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to exclude children younger than 16 could be punished with multimillion-dollar fines.

The U.K. said its ban will apply to platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, but not YouTube Kids or messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal. Starmer stressed that enforcement action will target tech companies, not children.

He said the move was a “big moment for our country,” adding that he will go further than Australia’s measures.

The government will also act to prevent strangers from contacting children on gaming and livestreaming platforms, Starmer said. AI chatbots designed to simulate romantic or sexual relationships with users will be restricted to over-18s only, and authorities are also considering additional measures including overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for those under 18.

More details are expected next month.

Some skepticism over whether a ban will work

The decision follows a public comment period in which the government received 116,000 responses from parents, the tech industry and children. More than 90% of respondents wanted an under-16 ban, the government said.

Ellen Roome, a children’s online safety campaigner whose son took his own life at 14 years old, welcomed the move. She believes her son died after an online challenge went wrong and has campaigned for legal reforms to give parents access to children’s social media accounts after their death.

“The tech companies, if they wanted to make changes, they could have done that by now. They’ve chosen not to do it,” she said. “We need to come down hard on them. If they’re not going to do it, we need to be very strict.”

But others say research in Australia has shown that age verification is difficult to enforce, and that a blanket ban fails to address a deeper problem — the way social media algorithms push harmful content to young people.

“This is far too easy to work around. It is based on age verification tools that have been shown to be ineffective to date,” said Kate Edwards, head of education at the Molly Rose Foundation, which was set up in memory of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life after being exposed to self-harm content online.

“It does nothing to address the actual problem itself, the harmful algorithms, the harmful content that is existing on those platforms,” Edwards added.

A Meta statement said it shares “the goal of keeping teens safe online,” and that it now features teen accounts to automatically limit who can contact them and the content they see.

“Like others, we don’t think bans will achieve this goal,” Meta said, adding that Australia had shown how “bans risk isolating teens from online communities and information.”

Jon Crowcroft, a communications systems professor at the University of Cambridge, said people supporting social bans are well-meaning but probably misguided, and changes could prevent children from accessing sites they need.

“There is a real risk this will drive some users to worse sites, and policing devices is close to impossible technically,” Crowcroft said.

Other critics including the Open Rights Group have expressed concerns about age verification companies and how users’ private data is protected.

U.S. opposes the move

The ban could further inflame tensions with the U.S., which has warned that regulations should be narrow and not violate free speech protections, according to a statement from the U.S. Embassy in London. It said it was also concerned that regulations would place greater burdens on American technology companies.

Starmer said he expected to discuss the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders at a Group of Seven summit in France that starts Monday.

“I honestly think that across world leaders, there has always been a recognition that leaders have to take steps to protect children,” he said. “I don’t think that’s controversial.”