SEOUL, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- South Korea reported 102,211 more COVID-19 cases as of midnight Friday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 1,858,009, the health authorities said Saturday.
The daily caseload was down from a record high of 109,831, but it hovered above 100,000 for the second straight day, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which became a dominant strain here.
Of the new cases, 23,135 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 30,641 and 7,816, respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 40,480, or 39.7 percent of the total local transmission.
Among the new cases, 139 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 28,003.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 408, up 23 from the previous day.
Seventy-one more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 7,354. The total fatality rate was 0.40 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,793,048 people, or 87.3 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,290,485, or 86.3 percent of the population.
The number of those who received booster jabs was 30,315,395 people, or 59.1 percent of the population. ■