According to their new paper released Friday, there are now several independent analyses of the case data collected in recent weeks pointing to the same trend—an uptick in people dying from B 1.1.7 compared to people infected with other strains of the virus. Though the exact numbers differ between groups, they suggest that B 1.1.7 is about 30% more likely to cause death than previous strains. Note that, while a 30% increase sounds huge, the overall mortality rate would still be somewhere around 1%.

“This is of course quite concerning, given the speed at which this variant has overtaken circulating strains across different regions and our inability to control general transmission in many parts of the world,” Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba in Canada who wasn’t involved in the new research, told Gizmodo in an email.