Korea Has Most COVID Cases per Population

Korea had the most COVID cases per population in the world over the past week, and there are fears that Omicron variants such as BQ.1.1, which are raging in the U.S. and Europe, could spread to Korea and make matters worse.

According to Our World in Data, Korea had 981 COVID cases per million people a day in the past week. Next came Taiwan (912), Hong Kong (704), Cyprus (578), Japan (575), and New Zealand (572).

"Cases have been increasing here since lockdown was eased as post-infection and vaccine immunity waned," said Kim Woo-joo of Korea University Guro Hospital.

But on Monday morning the daily tally of new coronavirus infections stood at 23,765, down from over 50,000 a day last week.