SEOUL, Dec 16 (NNN-YONHAP) – South Korea recorded 7,622 more confirmed cases of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours until midnight, bringing the total tally to 544,117.
The daily caseload was slightly down from a record high of 7,850 reported a day earlier.
The recent resurgence in cases was attributable to small cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.
Of the new cases, 3,047 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 2,140 and 509.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 1,895 or 25.0 percent of the total local transmissions.
The number of the Omicron variant infections rose to 148, including 37 imported cases and 111 domestic transmissions, up 20 from a day earlier.
A total of 31 newly reported cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 16,200.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition rose to 989, up 25 from a day earlier.
Sixty-two more deaths were reported in the country, bringing the overall death toll to 4,518.
The country administered vaccines to 43,197,555 people, or 84.1 percent of the population, and the number of fully vaccinated people was 41,871,536, or 81.5 percent of population.
The number of people having received booster shots was 8,866,898, or 17.3 percent of the population.– NNN-YONHAP
