South Korea reported one-thousand-600 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, a day after it registered a new daily record of one-thousand-615 cases.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency(KDCA) said that the newly confirmed infections throughout Wednesday raised the country's accumulated caseload to 173-thousand-511.

It marks the second highest daily count and the ninth consecutive day the daily figure exceeded the one-thousand mark. 

The portion of local infections outside the capital region neared 30 percent, indicating that the fourth wave of the pandemic, which began in the Seoul metro area, is spilling over to many other regions. 

While one-thousand-555 of the new cases were local transmissions, one-thousand-98 of domestic infections, or 70-point-six percent, came from the greater Seoul region, including 518 in the capital and 491 in Gyeonggi Province. 

Other parts of the nation reported 457 cases. The ratio hovered above 20 percent for the seventh straight day and surpassed 29 percent for the first time since the country entered the fourth wave. 

Two more deaths have been reported, bringing the death toll to two-thousand-50. The fatality rate for the nation stands at one-point-18 percent. 

The number of critically ill patients increased by four to 167.