SEOUL, March 29, 2022 (BSS/Xinhua) - South Korea reported 347,554 new
COVID-19 cases as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the
total number of infections to 12,350,428, the health authorities said
Tuesday.

  The daily caseload was sharply up from 187,213 in the previous day due to
higher virus tests on weekdays, 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. Of the new cases, 66,078 were Seoul
residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province
and the western port city of Incheon was 88,695 and 18,826 respectively.

  The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of
new infections in the non-capital areas was 173,914, or 50.0 percent of the
total local transmission.

  Among the new cases, 41 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to
31,003. The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood
at 1,215, down 58 from the previous day.

  A total of 237 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at
15,423. The total fatality rate was 0.12 percent.

   The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,946,767 people, or
87.6 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated
people was 44,478,548, or 86.7 percent of the population. The number of those
who received booster jabs was 32,667,018 people, or 63.7 percent of the
population.