SEOUL, Feb 13 (NNN-YONHAP) – South Korea’s daily number of COVID-19 cases hit a record high, amid the spread of the Omicron variant, the health authorities said today.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the country reported 56,431 more cases, for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 1,350,630.
The daily caseload was up from 54,941, the previous day, hovering above 50,000 for the fourth consecutive day.
The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area, amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which became a dominant strain here.
Of the new cases, 11,777 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 17,065 and 4,469, respectively.
The virus spread also raged in non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 22,986, or 40.8 percent of the total local transmission.
Among the new cases, 134 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 27,224.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 288, up 13 from the previous day.
Thirty-six more deaths were confirmed, bringing the death toll to 7,081. The total fatality rate was 0.52 percent.
The country administered vaccines to 44,731,406 people, or 87.2 percent of the population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,219,764, or 86.2 percent of the population.
The number of those who received booster jabs was 29,421,463 people, or 57.3 percent of the population.– NNN-YONHAP
