South Korea reports 353,980 new COVID-19 cases

SEOUL – South Korea recorded 353,980 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, bringing the total number of infections to 9,936,540, the health authorities said Tuesday.

The daily caseload was sharply up from 209,165 in the previous day, marking the first rebound in five 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 spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

Of the new cases, 65,033 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 96,256 and 17,568, respectively.

Read more: South Korea reports 209,169 new COVID-19 cases

Among the new cases, 46 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 30,709.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,104, down by 26 from the previous day.

A total of 384 more deaths were confirmed from COVID-19 in the Asian country, taking the death toll to 13,141. The total fatality rate was 0.13 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,931,582 people, or 87.6 percent of the total population, and the number of fully vaccinated people was 44,461,722, or 86.6 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 32,419,209, or 63.2 percent of the population.