The head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Medical Emergencies Program, Mike Ryan warned on Friday that the COVID-19 will not just disappear as the summer approaches.

"It is a false hope that coronavirus will just disappear in the summer like flu," he said.

The global number of novel coronavirus cases has reached 98,023, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

"We are on the verge of reaching 100,000 confirmed cases," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that there have been 3,380 deaths so far.

Ghebreyesus says he is especially concerned that the COVID-19 disease is spreading to countries with weaker health systems that may fail to contain an outbreak.

A count from Johns Hopkins University in the U.S., as well as other tallies, says the number has already surpassed 100,000.