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World leaders should not assume COVID-19 will be seasonal and subside in the summer, like the flu, the World Health Organization said Friday, according to CNBC. 

“We have to assume that the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. “It’s a false hope to say, yes, that it will disappear like the flu.”

“We hope it does. That would be a godsend,” he added. “But we can’t make that assumption. And there is no evidence.”

Earlier in the outbreak, U.S. health officials said there was a hypothesis among mathematical modelers that the outbreak “could potentially be seasonal” and relent in warmer conditions.

Earlier Friday, the total number of COVID-19 cases surpassed 100,000 worldwide. The majority of the cases are in mainland China, followed by South Korea, Iran and Italy. In the United States, 233 cases have been confirmed, including 14 deaths, according to John Hopkins University.