S.Korea reports 6,603 more COVID-19 cases

SEOUL – South Korea reported 6,603 more cases of the COVID-19 as of midnight Wednesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 712,503.

The daily caseload was up from 5,805 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, 1,292 were Seoul residents. The Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon recorded new infections of 2,364 and 407 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 2,294, or 36.1 percent of the total local transmission.

Read more: S.Korea reports 5,805 more COVID-19 cases

Among the new cases, 246 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 22,551.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 488, down 44 from the previous day.

Twenty-eight more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 6,480. The total fatality rate was 0.91 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,530,525 people, or 86.8 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 43,676,631, or 85.1 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 24,219,031 people, or 47.2 percent of the population.