SEOUL, March 29 (Xinhua) -- South Korea reported 347,554 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 12,350,428, the health authorities said Tuesday.
The daily caseload was sharply up from 187,213 in the previous day due to higher virus tests on weekdays, 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, 66,078 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 88,695 and 18,826 respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 173,914, or 50.0 percent of the total local transmission.
Among the new cases, 41 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 31,003.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,215, down 58 from the previous day.
A total of 237 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 15,423. The total fatality rate was 0.12 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,946,767 people, or 87.6 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,478,548, or 86.7 percent of the population.
The number of those who received booster jabs was 32,667,018 people, or 63.7 percent of the population. ■