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A monitor at the Seongnam City Hall’s disaster and safety situation room displays the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, when the cumulative total surpassed 1 million in South Korea. (Yonhap News)

The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases in South Korea passed the 1 million mark this week amid a sharp rise in cases associated with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The Central Disease Control Headquarters (CDCH) announced Sunday that a total of 38,691 new cases had been confirmed by the end of the previous day, bringing the cumulative total to 1,009,688.

Over the past seven days, the number of COVID-19 deaths in South Korea stood at 3.7 per one million people in the population, which was low in comparison with other OECD members.

According to the CDCH, the cumulative number of confirmed cases per million people in South Korea totaled 16,047 as of Jan. 31. The case fatality rate was 0.8%, or 130 cumulative deaths per million people.

In the case of Israel, the cumulative rate of confirmed cases and deaths per million people were 315,795 and 1,002, respectively, for a fatality rate of 0.3%. In the US, the figures were 220,916 and 2,633, respectively, for a fatality rate of 1.2%.

Japan’s cumulative confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people were 20,496; its deaths per million were 149, making for a case fatality rate of 0.7%.

In terms of the number of confirmed cases per one million people in the past seven days (Jan. 24 to Jan. 30), figures greatly varied across countries, from 53,780 in Israel, to 35,825 in France; 12,584 in Germany; 11,370 in the US; and 1,834 in South Korea.

During the same period, total deaths per million people came out to 3.7 in South Korea — significantly lower than that in the US (50.1), Israel (33.8), the UK (32.1), though slightly higher than that in Japan (1.9).

Since the very first case of the COVID-19 virus in South Korea was confirmed on Jan. 20, 2020, it took the country 749 days to reach 1 million cumulative COVID-19 cases. Many other countries reached the grim milestone more quickly — 233 days for Colombia, 264 days for Spain, 435 days for Canada, 656 days for Greece, and 715 days for Australia.

The CDCH noted that South Korea was “found to be one of the last countries” to reach the 1 million cases-mark, “even when compared to OECD countries less populous than South Korea with populations of at least 1 million.”

Meanwhile, the world saw 23.19 million newly confirmed COVID-19 cases from Jan. 24 to 30 according to the World Health Organization — a 1.4% increase from the week before. Likewise, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and Germany saw record caseloads during that period.

In the US, cases dropped off in the past two weeks while the number of deaths reached a new high since February of 2020. A total of 3,785,082 people tested positive for COVID-19 and 16,671 people died during the week.

In Russia, total caseloads more than doubled compared to the week before, and the so-called stealth Omicron subvariant (BA.2) accounted for 3% of confirmed Omicron cases.

By Jang Hyeon-eun, staff reporter

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