New York, April 13 -- The COVID-19 pandemic is "a long way from over" but there are many reasons to be optimistic and it's possible the pandemic can be brought under control "within months", the head of the UN health agency said on Monday.

Although January and February saw six consecutive weeks of plummeting COVID-19 cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief said that had gone into reverse, with last week yielding "the fourth-highest number of cases in a single week so far".

"We have now seen seven consecutive weeks of increasing cases, and four weeks of increasing deaths", Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists at a regular media briefing.

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More than 780 million doses of vaccine have now been admin...