The US should brace for a second wave of coronavirus cases to hit next year, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.

Dr. Robert Redfield said COVID-19 may turn out to be seasonal like other bugs such as the flu.

“I think we have to assume this is like other respiratory viruses, and there will be a seasonality to it,” Redfield told “Good Morning America.”

Redfield said that the country needs to ramp up testing capacity now, and implement other control measures, such as contact tracing, to prepare for the possibility of the next large outbreak.

“The CDC is science-based, data-driven, [so] until we see it, we don’t know for certain [there will be a resurgence],” Redfield said. “But it is critical that we plan that this virus is likely to follow a seasonality pattern similar to flu, and we’re going to have another battle with it upfront and aggressively next winter.”

The CDC director said he refers to the strategy necessary to fight the virus as “block and tackle, block and tackle.”

“We are working hard to augment [public health tools] now so that as we get into the next season, we’ll be able to stay in high containment mode while we complement that with some continued mitigation strategies,” Redfield said.

More than 609,000 cases have been detected in the country, including at least 26,000 deaths, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.