March 31

South Korea reported 320,743 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Wednesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 13,095,631, the health authorities said Thursday.

The daily caseload was down from 424,641 in the prior day, and it was lower than 395,532 a week earlier, 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, 60,131 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 84,657 and 18,128 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 157,803, or 49.2 percent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 24 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 31,059.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,315, up 14 from the previous day.

A total of 375 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 16,230. The total fatality rate was 0.12 percent.

The number of people who received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines was 44,484,725, or 86.7 percent of the total population, and the figure for those getting booster jabs was 32,714,951 people, or 63.8 percent of the population.

xinhua