SEOUL, Feb 18 (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 109,831 more cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 1,755,806.
The daily caseload was up from 93,135 the previous day, topping 100,000 for the first time.
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, 25,626 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 36,507 and 7,342 respectively.
The virus spread also raged in non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 40,240, or 36.7 percent of the total local transmission.
Among the new cases, 116 were imported, lifting the total to 27,864.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 385, down four from the previous day.
Forty-five more deaths were confirmed, bringing the death toll to 7,283. The total fatality rate was 0.41 percent.
The country administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,779,154 people, or 87.3 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully inoculated people was 44,272,949, or 86.3 percent of the population.
The number of those who received booster jabs was 30,068,482 people, or 58.6 percent of the population.– NNN-YONHAP
