MOSCOW (Sputnik) - South Korea registered 744 new coronavirus cases and two related deaths over the past 24 hours, keeping up the upward trend of the past week despite intensifying the vaccination campaign, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The South Korean daily increase in COVID-19 cases has not been over 700 since 26 May, when 706 new cases were logged. In the last seven days, the country had its daily virus record rise from 430 on Monday to 677 on Wednesday and 695 on Friday.
The total toll of COVID-19 cases in South Korea is 143,596 and the death toll is 1,971, as of Saturday.
South Korea began its vaccination campaign on 26 February with an aim to immunise at least a quarter of the population — about 13 million people — by the end of June. The country uses the vaccines by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and, most recently, Johnson & Johnson, the first batch of which arrived in Seongnam from the United States this morning.
A total of 7.45 million South Koreans have received at least one vaccine doses, an increase of 367,761 over the past day, and 2.27 million people have been fully vaccinated, with 29,584 receiving their second dose the previous day, according to the report.