Seoul, Feb 26 (IANS): South Korea reported 166,209 more Covid cases as of midnight Friday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 2,831,283, the health authorities said Saturday.

The daily caseload was slightly up from 165,890 in the previous day, staying below 170,000 for two days, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The recent resurgence was driven by infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the Omicron variant spread, Xinhua news agency reported.

Of the new cases, 36,773 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 48,147 and 12,113 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 69,035, or 41.6 per cent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 141 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 29,006.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 643, down 12 from the previous day.

A total of 112 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 7,895. The total fatality rate was 0.28 per cent.

The country has administered Covid vaccines to 44,846,725 people, or 87.4 per cent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,349,600, or 86.4 per cent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 31,228,461, or 60.9 per cent of the population.