SEOUL, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) — South Korea reported 7,314 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Friday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 558,864.

The daily caseload was down from 7,434 in the previous day, but it hovered above 7,000 for four straight days.

The recent resurgence was attributable to small cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.

Of the new cases, 2,788 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 2,033 and 599.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 1,864, or 25.6 percent of the total local transmission.

The number of the Omicron variant infections was 166, including 42 imported cases and 124 domestic transmissions, up 15 from the prior day.

Thirty cases were imported, lifting the combined figure to 16,266.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,016, up 45 from the previous day.

Fifty-three more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 4,644. The total fatality rate was 0.83 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 43,412,978 people, or 84.5 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully inoculated people was 42,024,307, or 81.8 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster shots was 10,954,877 people, or 21.3 percent of the population.

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