South Korea's daily number of COVID-19 cases hit a new record high, surpassing 27,000 for the first time amid the spread of the Omicron variant of the virus, the health authorities said Friday.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the country recorded 27,443 new cases of COVID-19, raising the total number of infections to 934,656.
The daily caseload was up from 22,907 in the previous day, hovering above 20,000 for three straight days.
The recent resurgence was driven by cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which became a dominant strain here.
Of the new cases, 6,139 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 7,202 and 1,779, respectively.
The virus also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 12,163, or 44.6 percent of the total local transmissions.
Among the new cases, 160 were imported, lifting the total number to 25,967.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 257, down by 17 from the previous day.
Twenty-four more deaths were reported from the pandemic, taking the overall death toll to 6,836. The total fatality rate was 0.73 per cent.
The Asian country has administered COVID-19 vaccine doses to 44,658,333 people, or 87.0 percent of the total population, and the number of fully vaccinated people was 44,053,608, or 85.8 per cent of the population.
The number of those who have received booster jabs was 27,594,934, or 53.8 percent of the population. (ANI/Xinhua)
( With inputs from ANI )
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