SEOUL, July 8 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s health authorities said Friday the country is undergoing a new wave of COVID-19, citing the fast spread of the highly contagious mutation of the omicron strain amid the summer vacation season.
The country added 19,323 new COVID-19 infections, including 191 from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 18,471,172, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
Friday’s tally is similar to the 19,371 on Wednesday and the 18,511 on Thursday, and about double the 9,522 a week ago.
The country added 12 COVID-19 deaths on Friday, raising the death toll to 24,605. The fatality rate stood at 0.13 percent.
The number of critically ill patients increased by six to 62, the KDCA said.
As of 9 p.m. Friday, local governments had reported 19,400 additional cases, up 775 from the same time Thursday and 1.9 times the number from one week before.
Daily cases are counted until midnight and announced the following morning.
South Korean health authorities said “much evidence points to the fact that the country is confronting another wave of COVID-19 infections.”
The number of new cases stayed above 18,000 for the fourth straight day Friday.
The pace of the virus’ reproduction has recently gone up, largely due to the nation’s increased mobility for summer holidays, waning immunity, rising indoor infections and the emerging subvariants.
Authorities said the spreading BA.5, a subvariant of the COVID-19 omicron variant, is more infectious than the earlier mutations and allegedly resistant to the immunity from previous COVID-19 infections.
South Korea is set to introduce a tighter plan to contain the COVID-19 resurgence by next week.
Of the 19,132 locally transmitted cases reported Friday, Seoul accounted for 4,605 cases, with the surrounding Gyeonggi Province reporting 5,395 cases.
There were 932 infections in Incheon, around 30 kilometers west of Seoul. The three areas accounted for 57.1 percent of all local infection cases.
Source: Yonhap News Agency