Seoul, April 7 : South Korea has reported 224,820 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 14,778,405, the health authorities said on Thursday. The daily caseload was down from 286,294 the previous day, staying below 300,00 for the third consecutive day, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2 drove the recent resurgence, especially in the Seoul metropolitan area, reports Xinhua. The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 113,406, or 50.4 percent of the total local transmission. The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 1,116, down 12 from the previous day. A total of 348 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 18,381. The total fatality rate was 0.12 percent. The number of people who received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines was 44,506,422, or 86.7 percent of the total population, and the figure for those getting booster jabs was 32,857,630 people. XC GNK