S. Korea reports record high of 54,941 daily COVID-19 cases

SEOUL, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's daily number of COVID-19 cases hit a record high amid the spread of the Omicron variant, the health authorities said on Saturday.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the country reported 54,941 more cases of COVID-19 for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 1,294,205.

The daily caseload was up from 53,926 in the previous day, hovering above 50,000 for the third consecutive day.

The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which became a dominant strain here.

Of the new cases, 13,189 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 15,952 and 5,059 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 20,628, or 37.6 percent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 113 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 27,090.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 275, up four from the previous day.

Thirty-three more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 7,045. The total fatality rate was 0.54 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,725,434 people, or 87.2 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully inoculated people was 44,207,093, or 86.1 percent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 29,244,945 people, or 57.0 percent of the population.