People wait for COVID-19 test at a makeshift testing site in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 23, 2022. South Korea reported a new record high of 171,452 more COVID-19 cases as of midnight Tuesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 2,329,182, the health authorities said Wednesday. (NEWSIS/Handout via Xinhua)
SEOUL, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- South Korea reported a new record high of 171,452 more COVID-19 cases as of midnight Tuesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 2,329,182, the health authorities said Wednesday.
The daily caseload was sharply up from 99,573 in the previous day, topping the previous high of 109,822 tallied on Feb. 18, 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, 41,389 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 53,524 and 11,060 respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 65,298, or 38.1 percent of the total local transmission.
Among the new cases, 181 were imported, lifting the total to 28,554.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 512, up 32 from the previous day.
Ninety-nine more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 7,607. The total fatality rate was 0.33 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,819,897 people, or 87.3 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully inoculated people was 44,315,903, or 86.4 percent of the population.
The number of those who received booster jabs was 30,743,393 people, or 59.9 percent of the population. ■
People wait for COVID-19 test at a makeshift testing site in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 23, 2022. South Korea reported a new record high of 171,452 more COVID-19 cases as of midnight Tuesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 2,329,182, the health authorities said Wednesday. (NEWSIS/Handout via Xinhua)
