May 23

South Korea recorded 9,975 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Sunday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 17,967,672, the health authorities said Monday.

The daily caseload was down from 19,298 in the previous day and lower than 13,290 tallied a week earlier, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The health authorities believed that the daily caseload has been on the decline following the Omicron variant-driven resurgence, which may have peaked in the middle of March.

Among the new infections, 17 were imported cases, lifting the total to 32,528.

The latest number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 225, down by 4 from the previous day.

A total of 22 more deaths were confirmed from the pandemic, bringing the death toll to 23,987. The total fatality rate was 0.13 percent.

The number of people who received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines was 44,569,436 or 86.9 percent of the total population, and the figure for those getting booster jabs was 33,262,901 or 64.8 percent of the population.

xinhua