Seoul (South Korea), October 18: South Korea reported 1,050 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Sunday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 343,445.
The daily caseload was down from 1,420 in the prior day due to fewer virus tests over the weekend, but it hovered above 1,000 for 104 days since July 7. The daily average tally for the past week was 1,520.
The recent resurgence was attributable to cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.
Of the new cases, 352 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people residing in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 358 and 84.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 236, or 22.9 percent of the total local transmission.
Twenty cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 14,840.
Eight more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,668. The total fatality rate stood at 0.78 percent.
A total of 1,437 more patients were discharged from quarantine after making full recovery, pulling up the combined number to 311,781. The total recovery rate was 90.78 percent.
Since the mass vaccination was launched on Feb. 26, the country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to a total of 40,400,262 people, or 78.7 percent of the total population.
The number of fully vaccinated people was 33,185,615, or 64.6 percent of the population.
Source: Xinhua