Seoul: South Korea’s daily COVID-19 cases hit a record high due to the continued virus spread in the Seoul metropolitan area, the health authorities said Wednesday.
The country reported 2,223 more cases of the COVID-19 for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 216,206.
The daily caseload topped 2,000 for the first time since the country’s first case was found in January last year.
It was sharply up from 1,537 in the prior day, hovering above 1,000 for 36 straight days. The daily average tally for the past week was 1,755.
The recent resurgence was attributable to cluster infections in the greater Seoul region.
Of the new cases, 650 were Seoul residents. The numbers of the infected people residing in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon were 648 and 107 each.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan area. The number of newly infected people in the non-capital region was 740, or 34.5 percent of the total local transmission.
Seventy-eight cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 12,552.
One more death was confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,135. The total fatality rate stood at 0.99 percent.
A total of 1,983 more patients were discharged from quarantine after making full recovery, pulling up the combined number to 189,506. The total recovery rate was 87.65 percent.
The country has tested over 12.15 million people, among whom 11,451,927 tested negative for the virus and 488,067 are being checked.
Since the mass vaccination was launched on Feb. 26, the country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to a total of 21,635,106 people with 8,062,980 fully vaccinated.
