Korea's daily COVID-19 cases keep reaching new highs

A medical worker takes a nasal swab sample from a man at a makeshift testing site for COVID-19 in Seoul, Feb. 4. AP-Yonhap

Daily COVID-19 infections exceeded 30,000 for the first time, Friday, hitting another all-time high of over 36,000 due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus after the Lunar New Year holiday.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 36,362 new cases, including 36,162 local ones, raising the total to 971,018

The latest figure is a whopping increase of nearly 9,000 from the previous daily record of 27,443 reported for Thursday.

New infections have spiked drastically in recent days, breaking the 20,000 mark for the first time Tuesday, just a week after it topped 10,000 daily cases, Jan. 26. New daily cases have soared by nearly five-fold in the past two weeks.

The death toll from the disease came to 6,858, up 22 from a day earlier; while the number of critically ill patients rose by 12 to 269.

The KDCA had warned that the three-day Lunar New Year holiday, which ended Wednesday, could send virus cases to new heights in the weeks to come with daily infections possibly reaching 100,000.

On Friday, the government decided to extend its current social distancing measures for two more weeks through Feb. 20, under which private gatherings of more than six people are banned and businesses are subject to a 9 p.m. curfew.

Of the locally transmitted cases, Gyeonggi Province that surrounds Seoul saw 10,419, followed by the capital with 8,564 and the western port city of Incheon with 2,494. Cases from overseas rose 200 to 26,167.

As of Saturday, 27.95 million people, or 54.5 percent of the country's 52 million population, had received booster shots. The number of fully vaccinated people came to 44.09 million people, accounting for 85.9 percent. (Yonhap)