South Korea reports record high of 219,241 daily COVID-19 cases

Seoul: South Korea reported a record daily high of 219,241 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Tuesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 3,492,686, the health authorities said Wednesday.

The daily caseload was sharply up from 138,993 in the previous day, topping 200,000 for the first time, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the Omicron variant spread.

Of the new cases, 46,932 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 68,622 and 12,104 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 91,515, or 41.8 percent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 68 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 29,444.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 762, up 35 from the previous day.

Ninety-six more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 8,266. The total fatality rate was 0.24 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,860,559 people, or 87.4 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,370,169, or 86.5 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 31,510,985 people or 61.4 percent of the population.

SOURCE: XINHUA