S.Korea reports 266,135 new Covid-19 cases

Seoul, April 5 (IANS) South Korea reported 266,135 new Covid-19 cases as compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 14,267,401, the health authorities said on Tuesday.

The daily caseload was up from 127,190 on Sunday, but it was lower than 347,490 a week earlier, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2 drove the recent resurgence, especially in the Seoul metropolitan area, Xinhua news agency reported.

Of the new cases, 51,500 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 69,362 and 15,354 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 129,892, or 48.8 per cent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 27 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 31,237.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,121, up by 13 on Sunday.

A total of 209 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 17,662. The total fatality rate was 0.12 per cent.

The number of people who received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines was 44,502,007, or 86.7 per cent of the total population, and the figure for those getting booster jabs was 32,828,372 people, or 64 per cent of the population.