Seoul, Feb 28 (IANS): South Korea reported 139,626 more Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 3,134,456, the health authorities said Monday.

The daily caseload was down from 163,565 in the previous day due to fewer virus tests over the weekend, falling below 140,000 in six days, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

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, 27,911 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 37,258 and 10,740 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 63,557, or 45.6 per cent of the total local transmission.

Among the new cases, 160 were imported, lifting the total to 29,318.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 715, up by 52 from the previous day.

A total of 114 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 8,058. The total fatality rate was 0.26 per cent.

The country has administered Covid vaccines to 44,852,140 people, or 87.4 per cent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,358,888, or 86.4 per cent of the population.

The number of those who received booster jabs was 31,359,539, or 61.1 per cent of the population.