SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea reported 5,202 more confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours until midnight Monday, raising the total tally to 575,615.
The daily caseload was slightly down from 5,318 in the previous day, staying below 6,000 for two days.
The recent surge was attributable to small cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.
Of the new cases, 1,979 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 1,299 and 381, respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 1,485, or 28.9 percent of the total local transmissions.
The number of the Omicron variant infections was 227, including 70 imported cases and 157 domestic transmissions, up 49 from the prior day.
Fifty-eight cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 16,446.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,022, up 25 from the previous day.
Fifty-two more deaths were confirmed from the pandemic in the Asian country, bringing the overall coronavirus death toll to 4,828. The total fatality rate was 0.84 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 43,620,898 people, or 84.9 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully vaccinated people was 42,131,332, or 82.0 percent of the population.
The number of those people who received booster shots was 12,377,850, or 24.1 percent of the population. Enditem
