South Korea reports 327,549 new COVID-19 cases

SEOUL – South Korea reported 327,549 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Wednesday, raising the total number of infections to 5,539,650, the health authorities said Thursday.

The daily caseload was slightly down from a record high of 342,438 in the previous day, but it stayed above 300,00 for two days, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

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

Of the new cases, 66,859 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 88,141 and 21,974 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 150,516, or 46.0 percent of the total local transmission.

Read more: South Korea reports record high of 342,446 new COVID-19 cases

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,113, up 26 from the previous day.

A total of 206 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 9,646. The total fatality rate was 0.17 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,888,313 people, or 87.5 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,407,520, or 86.5 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 31,919,282, or 62.2 percent of the population.