South Korea reports 362,338 new COVID-19 cases

SEOUL – South Korea reported 362,338 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 7,228,550, the health authorities said Tuesday.

The daily caseload was sharply up from 309,784 in the previous day, hovering above 300,000 for four straight days, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

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

Of the new cases, 66,067 were Seoul residents. The number of newly-infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 102,983 and 20,444 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 172,789, or 47.7 percent of the total local transmission.

Read more: South Korea reports record high of 383,665 daily COVID-19 cases

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,196, up 38 from the previous day.

A total of 293 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 10,888. The total fatality rate was 0.15 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,911,681 people, or 87.5 percent of the total population, and the number of fully-inoculated people was 44,439,758, or 86.6 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 32,151,084 people, or 62.7 percent of the population.