S.Korea reports 54,619 new COVID-19 cases

SEOUL – South Korea reported 54,619 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Sunday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 1,405,246, the health authorities said Monday.

The daily caseload was down from a record high of 56,431 in the previous day due to fewer tests over the weekend, but it hovered above 50,000 for the fifth straight day, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which became a dominant strain here.

Of the new cases, 11,595 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 15,866 and 3,576 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in non-capital areas was 23,476, or 43.1 percent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 106 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 27,328.

Read more: S. Korea reports record high of 54,941 daily COVID-19 cases

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 306, up 18 from the previous day.

Twenty-one more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 7,102. The total fatality rate was 0.51 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,731,753 people, or 87.2 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,220,327, or 86.2 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 29,429,772 people or 57.3 percent of the population.