S. Korea's daily COVID-19 cases break records for 2 days

SEOUL, July 22 : South Korea's daily COVID-19 cases broke records for two straight days amid the cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area, the health authorities said Thursday.
   
The country reported 1,842 more cases of the COVID-19 for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 184,103.
   
It marked the highest-ever daily caseload since the country's first case was found in January last year. It was slightly up from the previous high of 1,781 tallied in the prior day.
   
The daily caseload hovered above 1,000 for 16 straight days. The daily average caseload for the past week was 1,513.
   
The recent resurgence was attributable to cluster infections in Seoul and its surrounding Gyeonggi province as well as imported cases.
   
Of the new cases, 494 were Seoul residents and 363 were people residing in Gyeonggi province.
   
A total of 309 cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 11,341.
   
The imported cases included 270 sailors of the 301-strong Cheonghae unit, which had been deployed to the waters off Africa on an anti-piracy mission but returned home earlier this week as the majority of the sailors were confirmed with the COVID-19.
   
Three more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,063. The total fatality rate stood at 1.12 percent.
   
A total of 1,439 more patients were discharged from quarantine after making full recovery, pulling up the combined number to 163,073. The total recovery rate was 88.58 percent.
   
The country has tested over 11.34 million people, among whom 10,890,319 tested negative for the virus and 269,496 are being checked.
   
Since the mass vaccination was launched on Feb. 26, the country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to a total of 16,583,044 people with 6,723,004 fully vaccinated.