December 28

South Korea reported 3,865 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 615,532.

The daily caseload was down from 4,206 in the previous day, falling below 4,000 in 28 days on the back of tougher anti-virus measures.

The recent resurgence was attributable to small cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.

Of the new cases, 1,254 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 1,045 and 233, respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 1,245, or 33.0 percent of the total local transmission.

The number of the Omicron variant infections was 449, including 183 imported cases and 266 local transmissions, up four from the prior day.

Eighty-eight cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 16,995.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,102, up 24 from the previous day.

Forty-six more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 5,346. The total fatality rate was 0.87 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,064,239 people, or 85.8 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully inoculated people was 42,384,425, or 82.5 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster shots was 15,953,140 people, or 31.1 percent of the population.

xinhua