SEOUL - South Korea's daily number of COVID-19 cases has crossed the 8,000 mark for the first time as the Omicron variant broke out despite recent expansion of social distancing rules that slowed the rate of transmission.
The Korea Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (KDCA) recorded 8,571 new cases as of Monday, January 24, beating the previous record of 7,850 cases in mid-December.
The new record comes amid the spread of the highly contagious but less lethal variant of Omicron, which dominated South Korea last week.
South Korea continued stricter COVID-19 restrictions in December as the daily number of cases peaked and the health system was threatened by a surge in critically ill patients before the Omicron wave hit.
Daily cases fell by almost half to around 4,000 cases this January. But that figure started to crawl last week due to the Omicron infection and hit the second highest level on Saturday.
The spike sparked fears of a possible bigger wave ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, when tens of millions of Koreans usually travel to visit relatives. Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum on Monday issued a special statement asking the public not to travel and gather during Chinese New Year celebrations begin on Saturday.
"It's like pouring fuel into a fire when people have high mobility and visit each other," he said at a press conference.
According to KDCA data, so far South Korea has reported 733,902 cases and 6,540 deaths of COVID-19, although nearly 95 percent of the adult population has been injected with the complete COVID-19 vaccine and more than half have received a booster vaccine.
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