Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who headed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under President Donald Trump until 2019, was one of the first experts to call out the slow development of COVID-19 testing in the United States.

Now the prescient Gottlieb is sounding the alarm again, and Americans ought to take heed. This time, it’s about a new, more transmissible variant of the COVID-19 virus. It has sent cases surging in Britain and could do the same on this side of the Atlantic.

“As current epidemic surge peaks, we may see 3-4 weeks of declines in new cases, but then new variant will take over,” said Gottlieb in a recent grim Twitter thread. “It’ll double in prevalence about every week. It’ll change the game and could mean we have persistent high infection through spring until we vaccinate enough people.”

A longer haul could loom as the virus circulates. Although the new United Kingdom strain doesn’t appear to cause more severe illness, it could be up to 70% more transmissible, according to a Jan. 5 report in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal.

Infectious disease experts are also monitoring other variants. While the new COVID-19 vaccines appear to be effective against the U.K. strain and others, vaccine supplies remain limited. There’s a potential for the U.K. variant to spread faster than people can be immunized.

The variant has been detected in multiple U.S. states, including Minnesota. Earlier this month, the state health department reported that five people from four Twin Cities counties had been infected with it.

While the Upper Midwest’s late fall and early winter COVID-19 surge has ebbed, the declining case numbers carry no guarantee against this region becoming a hot spot again. The U.K. variant’s risks add urgency to rolling out existing vaccine supplies more efficiently in Minnesota and elsewhere, and finding new ways to produce more. President-elect Joe Biden’s team will need to innovate and move quickly.

But the responsibility to act doesn’t just lie with the new administration or vaccine manufacturers. Individuals continue to have a vital role in halting COVID-19 transmission, and there is still a window of opportunity for responsible decisions — masking, distancing and avoiding risky settings — to slow the new variant’s spread.

“We need to buy time while we vaccinate,” Gottlieb said.