S. Korea reports 138,993 new COVID-19 cases

SEOUL – South Korea recorded 138,993 more COVID-19 cases as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 3,273,449, the health authorities said Tuesday.

The daily caseload was slightly down from 139,626 in the previous day, staying below 140,000 for two straight days, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid spreading of the Omicron variant of the virus.

Of the new cases, 27,885 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 39,211 and 8,956, respectively.

The virus also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 62,883, or 45.3 percent of the total local transmissions.

Among the new cases, 58 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 29,376.

Read more: S. Korea authorizes COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5-11

A total of 112 more deaths from COVID-19 were confirmed, bringing the death toll to 8,170. The total fatality rate was 0.25 percent.

The Asian country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,860,242 people, or 87.4 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully vaccinated people has risen to 44,369,667, or 86.5 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 31,503,092, or 61.4 percent of the population.