SEOUL, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) — South Korea reported 4,072 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 700,102.

The daily caseload was up from 3,858 in the previous day amid the spread of the Omicron variant, which the health authorities expected to become a dominant strain here in the near future.

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

Of the new cases, 684 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 1,470 and 177 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 1,432, or 38.1 percent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 309 were imported, lifting the total to 21,932.

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The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 543, down 36 from the previous day.

Forty-five more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 6,378. The total fatality rate was 0.91 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,505,276 people, or 86.7 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 43,582,128, or 84.9 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 23,741,205, or 46.3 percent of the population.