Students sit at desks that no longer have plastic dividers meant to stop spread of the coronavirus at an elementary school in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, on June 28, 2022. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 29 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s new coronavirus cases exceeded 10,000 for the first time in 20 days Wednesday, though in recent months the pandemic has shown a downward trend.
The country added 10,463 new COVID-19 infection cases, including 205 cases from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 18,349,756, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
The pandemic has loosened its stranglehold on the country since mid-March when infections peaked at more than 621,000. Daily virus caseloads remained below 10,000 from June 10 until Tuesday.
But the pace of decline has slowed in recent days, and the government warned that the virus could pick up speed again, as the reproduction rate reached 1 on Wednesday from 0.74 for the first week of June.
As of 9 p.m. Tuesday, the country had reported 9,076 new infections, down 769 from the same time the previous day. Daily infection cases are counted until midnight and announced the following morning.
The KDCA reported seven more deaths from COVID-19, raising the death toll to 24,537. The fatality rate stood at 0.13 percent.
The number of critically ill patients came to 59, down by three from a day ago.
Of the 10,258 locally transmitted cases, Seoul accounted for 2,471 cases, with the surrounding Gyeonggi Province reporting 2,643 cases. There were 576 infections in Incheon, 40 kilometers west of Seoul.
The three areas accounted for 55.4 percent of the total infection cases.
The number of infection cases from overseas jumped more than 70 percent to 205 from 119 a day earlier amid increased international flights and eased virus restrictions on overseas travel.
The last time the number topped 200 was early February.
Health authorities warned of a virus resurgence as subvariants of the coronavirus are spreading and more people travel for summer holidays.
(Yonhap)
