SEOUL, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea reported 99,573 more COVID-19 cases as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 2,157,734, the health authorities said Tuesday.
The daily caseload was up from 95,361 in the previous day, but it stayed below 100,000 for two days, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the Omicron variant spread.
Of the new cases, 21,769 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 29,558 and 7,771 respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 40,346, or 40.6 percent of the total local transmission.
Among the new cases, 129 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 28,373.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 480, unchanged from the previous day.
Fifty-eight more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 7,508. The total fatality rate was 0.35 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,811,397 people, or 87.3 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,309,867, or 86.3 percent of the population.
The number of those who received booster jabs was 30,626,840 people, or 59.7 percent of the population. ■
