
SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea reported 280,273 new Covid-19 cases as of midnight Thursday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 13,375,818, the health authorities said on Friday.
The daily caseload was down from 320,743 in the previous day, falling below 300,000 in four days, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the Omicron variant spread.
Of the new cases, 51,717 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 75,626 and 14,797 respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 138,085, or 49.3 percent of the total local transmission.
Among the new cases, 48 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 31,106.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,299, down 16 from the previous day.
A total of 360 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 16,590. The total fatality rate was 0.12 percent.
The number of people who received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines was 44,489,555, or 86.7 percent of the total population, and the figure for those getting booster jabs was 32,746,789 people, or 63.8 percent of the population.