Daily infections fall below 200,000 amid omicron's spread

▲ This photo taken on March 2, 2022, shows students walking on the campus of Chungbuk National University in Cheongju, 137 kilometers south of Seoul. (Yonhap)

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Daily infections fall below 200,000 amid omicron's spread

SEOUL, March 3 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's daily coronavirus cases fell below 200,000 Thursday, with health authorities staying on alert over the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant.

The country reported 198,803 new coronavirus infections, including 198,749 local cases, raising the total caseload to 3,691,488 according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

Daily infections surpassed 200,000 for the first time Wednesday, a day after the government suspended the enforcement of the vaccine pass system over the lack of staff handling the pandemic.

The daily caseload stayed above 130,000 for the ninth consecutive day as the omicron strain shows no signs of slowing down.

Virus-related deaths rose to 128 on Thursday from 96 a day earlier, bringing the death toll to 8,394. The fatality rate was 0.23 percent, the KDCA said.

The number of critically ill COVID-19 patients rose to 766 from 762 during the same period.

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