SEOUL, Feb 2: South Korea's daily number of COVID-19 cases hit a new record high amid the spread of the Omicron variant, the health authorities said Wednesday. According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the country reported 20,270 more cases of COVID-19 for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 884,310.
The daily caseload was up from 18,342 the previous day, surpassing 20,000 for the first time. The recent resurgence was driven by cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which became a dominant strain here. Of the new cases, 4,186 were Seoul residents. The numbers of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon were 6,018 and 1,396 respectively. The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region.
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The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 8,511, or 42.3 percent of the total local transmissions. Among the new cases, 159 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 25,675. The number of infected people who were in serious condition stood at 278, up by six from the previous day. Fifteen more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 6,787. The total fatality rate was 0.77 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,641,235 people, or 87.0 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 43,996,409, or 85.7 percent of the population. The number of those who have received booster jabs was 27,256,749 people or 53.1 percent of the population.
