Seoul, Feb 9 (IANS): South Korea's daily number of Covid-19 cases hit a new record high amid the spread of the Omicron variant, the health authorities said Wednesday.

The country reported 49,567 more cases of Covid in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 1,131,239, Xinhua news agency reported citing the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The daily caseload was sharply up from 36,719 the previous day, surpassing 49,000 for the first time.

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, 11,630 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 13,641 and 3,912 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections reported in the non-capital areas were 20,219, or 40.9 per cent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 165 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 26,761.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 285, which is 17 more than the previous day.

As many as 21 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 6,943. The total fatality rate was 0.61 per cent.

The country has administered Covid vaccines to 44,701,330 people, or 87.1 per cent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,156,016, or 86 per cent of the population.

At least 28,587,836, or 55.7 per cent of the population, has received their booster jabs.