Seoul [South Korea]: South Korea reported 286,294 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Tuesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 14,553,644, the health authorities said Wednesday.
The daily caseload was up from 266,135 the previous day, but it was lower than 424,597 a week earlier, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2 drove the recent resurgence, especially in the Seoul metropolitan area.
Of the new cases, 52,430 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 76,899 and 14,844, respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 142,099, or 49.6 per cent of the total local transmission.
Among the new cases, 22 were imported, lifting the total to 31,259.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,128, up to seven from the previous day.
A total of 371 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 18,033. The total fatality rate was 0.12 per cent.
The number of people who received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines was 44,504,308, or 86.7 per cent of the total population, and the figure for those getting booster jabs was 32,840,952 people or 64.0 per cent of the population. (ANI/Xinhua)
