SEOUL, April 10 (Xinhua) -- South Korea recorded 164,481 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Saturday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 15,333,670, the health authorities said Sunday.
The daily caseload was down from 185,566 recorded in the previous day due to fewer virus tests over the weekend, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant of the virus and its subvariant BA.2 drove the recent resurgence, especially in the Seoul metropolitan area.
Of the new cases, 28,901 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 42,353 and 8,594, respectively.
The virus also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 84,606, or 51.4 percent of the total local transmissions.
Among the new cases, 27 were imported, lifting the total to 31,398.
The latest number of infected people who were in serious condition stood at 1,114, up by 15 from the previous day.
A total of 329 more deaths from COVID-19 were confirmed, taking the death toll to 19,421. The total fatality rate was 0.13 percent.
The number of people who received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines was 44,514,462, or 86.7 percent of the total population, and the number of those getting booster jabs was 32,922,883, or 64.2 percent of the population. ■