Seoul (South Korea), December 5: South Korea reported 5,128 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Saturday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 473,034.
The daily caseload was down from the record high of 5,352 in the previous day, but it marked the country's highest Saturday figure since the first case was found in January last year.
The recent resurgence was attributable to cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.
Of the new cases, 2,022 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 1,484 and 336.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 1,262, or 24.7 percent of the total local transmission.
The number of the Omicron variant infections was 12, including four imported cases and eight local transmissions, up three from the prior day.
Twenty-five cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 15,842.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 744, down eight from the previous day.
Forty-three more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 3,852. The total fatality rate was 0.81 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 42,676,990 people, or 83.1 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully inoculated people was 41,339,847, or 80.5 percent of the population.
The number of those who received booster shots was 3,952,609 people, or 7.7 percent of the population.
Source: Xinhua