ULAN BATOR, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) — Mongolia recorded 2,135 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 412,677, the country’s health ministry said Tuesday.

The latest confirmed cases were all locally transmitted, and more than half of them were detected in the national capital Ulan Bator, the hardest-hit area by COVID-19 and home to over half of the country’s population of 3.4 million.

Meanwhile, three more COVID-19 patients died in the past day, bringing the death toll to 2,016, the ministry added.

Read more: Mongolia logs 1,673 new COVID-19 cases

Since the beginning of this year, around 2,000 COVID-19 infections have been reported daily nationwide due to New Year’s celebrations and the Omicron variant.

So far, 66.7 percent of the total population have received two COVID-19 vaccine doses, while more than 975,013 people aged over 18 have received a third dose.

In addition, 44,305 Mongolians have received a fourth dose, which the country started to administer from Jan. 7 on a voluntary basis.