Seoul: South Korea's daily coronavirus cases stayed above 200,000 for the fourth consecutive day on Monday as the highly contagious omicron variant continued to fuel a surge in infections.
The country reported 210,716 new Covid-19 infections, including 210,628 local cases, raising the total caseload to 4,666,977, Yonhap news agency reported, citing the figures released by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The daily tally has been declining since peaking at a record-high of 266,850 cases Friday. The daily caseload surpassed 200,000 for the first time Wednesday since the country reported the first virus case in January 2020.
The Omicron variant has caused an unprecedented spike in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks. The total virus cases passed four million Saturday, just five days after reaching the three million mark. The country crossed the one million mark early last month, the KDCA said.
While Omicron causes less severe symptoms than the delta variant, the sheer size of the omicron surge escalated Covid-19 deaths and hospitalisations.
The country added 139 more Covid-19 deaths, bringing the death toll to 9,096. The fatality rate was 0.19 per cent.
Critical cases rose to 955, up 70 from a day ago. For the week ending Saturday, the corresponding tally was 761.
The global coronavirus caseload has topped 446.1 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 5.99 million and vaccinations to over 10.58 billion, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In its latest update on Monday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and the death toll stood at 446,163,541 and 5,998,819, respectively, while the total number of vaccine doses administered has increased to 10,588,769,788.
The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 79,271,466 and 958,621, according to the CSSE.
The second worst hit country in terms of cases is India (42,962,953 infections and 515,036 deaths), followed by Brazil (29,056,525 infections and 652,438 deaths).
The other countries with over 10 million cases are France (23,236,908), the UK (19,256,835), Russia (16,698,139), Germany (15,828,455), Turkey (14,353,888), Italy (13,026,112) and Spain (11,100,428), the CSSE figures showed.
The nations with a death toll of over 100,000 are Russia (349,196), Mexico (319,824), Peru (210,907), the UK (162,582), Italy (155,887), Indonesia (150,172), France (140,296), Colombia (139,091), Iran (137,948), Argentina (126,768), Germany (124,108), Poland (112,545), Ukraine (112,459) and Spain (100,413).
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