S.Korea reports 1,684 more COVID-19 cases, 339,361 in total

SEOUL: OCT. 15 – South Korea reported 1,684 more confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours until midnight Thursday, raising the total number of infections to 339,361.

The daily caseload was down from 1,939 in the previous day while hovering above 1,000 for 101 straight days since July 7. The daily average tally for the past week was 1,628.

The recent resurgence was attributable to cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.

Of the new cases, 680 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people residing in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 606 and 95 respectively.

The coronavirus also raged in the non-metropolitan region in the Asian country. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 289, or 17.3 percent of the total number of locally transmitted.

Fourteen cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 14,779.

Eight more deaths from the pandemic were confirmed, bringing the death toll to 2,626. The total fatality rate stood at 0.77 percent.

A total of 2,132 more recovered patients were discharged from quarantine, raising the combined number to 305,851. The total recovery rate was 90.13 percent.

Since the mass vaccination drive was launched on Feb. 26, South Korea has seen COVID-19 vaccines administered to a total of 40,242,429 people, or 78.4 percent of the total population.

The number of fully vaccinated people was 32,083,888, or 62.5 percent of the population

-Xinhua