SEOUL, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- South Korea reported 2,434 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Thursday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 295,132.
It marked the country's highest daily spike caseload since the first case was found here in January last year. The previous high was 2,221 tallied on Aug. 11.
The daily caseload was sharply up from 1,715 in the prior day following the Chuseok holiday, a South Korean version of Thanksgiving Day that continued through Wednesday.
The daily number of confirmed COVID-19 cases stayed above 1,000 for 80 straight days. The daily average tally for the past week was 1,885.
The recent resurgence was attributable to cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.
Of the new cases, 903 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people residing in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 704 and 140 respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 669, or 27.7 percent of the total local transmission.
Eighteen cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 14,275.
Seven more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,434. The total fatality rate stood at 0.82 percent.
A total of 1,650 more patients were discharged from quarantine after making full recovery, pulling up the combined number to 264,492. The total recovery rate was 89.62 percent.
Since the mass vaccination was launched on Feb. 26, the country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to a total of 37,132,188 people, or 72.3 percent of the total population.
The number of fully vaccinated people was 22,582,280, or 44.0 percent of the population. Enditem
