SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea on Saturday reported its deadliest day of the pandemic, with 112 fatalities in a 24-hour period as it grapples with a wave of coronavirus infections driven by the omicron variant.
Health workers diagnosed 166,209 new cases, which came close to Wednesday's single-day record of 171,451 and represented a more than a 37-fold increase from daily levels in mid-January, when omicron first emerged as the country's dominant strain of the virus.
Omicron has so far been less likely to cause serious illness or death than the delta strain that hit the country hard in December and early January. But hospitalizations and deaths are beginning to creep up amid an outbreak that is putting added pressure on worn-out health and public workers.