Health officials from South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported on Tuesday that they had confirmed an additional two cases of a new, worrying coronavirus variant.

So far, relatively little is known about this new mutation, titled the “delta-plus” variant and sometimes denoted K417N for its spike protein mutation. The first cases of this strain were identified in Europe in March; they have since spread to India, Britain, and the United States. Tuesday’s cases were the first to be reported in South Korea.

So far, the “delta-plus” variant has composed a small minority of known coronavirus cases. However, some experts have cautioned that the new strain might be more transmissible than the first delta variant, itself a more transmissible strain than the original disease. In particular, India’s Ministry of Health raised concern about the dangers of the new variant, suggesting that it could easily bind to a person’s lungs and resist existing treatments in hospitals. An Indian official reported on Friday that as many as 70 delta-plus cases had been detected in India, according to the Hindustan Times.

India’s example is a concerning one for the rest of the world because its COVID-19 spike in April 2021 gave rise to the first delta variant. Only around ten percent of India’s 1.3 billion people have been vaccinated, and the country has been badly affected by the pandemic, particularly following a series of political rallies and religious festivals in March and April that led to a massive coronavirus spike in the country.

India’s experience with the delta variant, which emerged overnight in India during the spike and rapidly spread around the world, highlights the dangers of a new, easily transmissible strain. However, the Hindustan Times reported that the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium had stated that the delta-plus variant was not likely to be significantly more transmissible than the delta variant.

In the United Kingdom, a July report put out by Public Health England stated that at least 39 cases of the delta-plus variant had been found, as well as 6 probable cases. Public health officials in the UK have underlined that the delta-plus variant has made up a very small proportion of the nation’s total coronavirus cases.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control’s information page on COVID-19 variants currently estimates that 0.3 percent of cases are from the delta-plus variant. Given the low rates of infection, and the apparently low likelihood that the delta-plus strain is much more dangerous than the delta variant, there appears to be no reason for exceptional alarm.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for The National Interest.