South Korea's new coronavirus cases remained below 70,000 today for the third day in a row as a highly contagious sub-variant of Omicron spreads in the country, Yonhap news agency reported.

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333 of the 65,433 new cases of COVID-19 were among those who arrived from abroad.

The total number of cases stood at 19,211,613, the Korea Agency for Disease Control and Prevention said.

This is the highest number of cases announced on a Sunday in 14 weeks.

Over the past week, new cases topped 76,000 on Wednesday before falling below 70,000 on Friday.

New cases of COVID in South Korea hit their highest level in two months

Omicron's BA.5 sub-variant has been spreading rapidly since late June with the start of the summer holiday season.

The daily number of cases exceeded 10,000 on June 29 for the first time in three weeks, then exceeded 20,000 on July 9 and 40,000 on July 13, BTA noted.

New deaths were 24,873. The death rate due to the coronavirus was 0.13% of cases.

146 patients are in critical condition, compared to 140 the previous day.

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