SEOUL, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) - South Korea reported 3,928 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Saturday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 440,896.

The daily caseload was down from 4,068 in the previous day owing to fewer tests over the weekend, but it marked the country's highest Saturday figure since the first case was found in January last year.

The recent resurgence was attributable to cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.

Of the new cases, 1,668 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 1,083 and 276 respectively.

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 866, or 22.2 percent of the total local transmission.

Thirty-five cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 15,673.

The government decided to prohibit the entrance of foreigners arriving from eight African nations, including South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi, beginning Sunday to help block the inflow of the potentially more transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19.

The South Korean people arriving from those countries, regardless of their vaccination, will be required to be placed under quarantine at designated facilities for 10 days and take three PCR tests during the 10-day period.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 647, up 13 from the previous day.

Fifty-six more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 3,548. The total fatality rate was 0.8 percent.

The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 42,510,125 people, or 82.8 percent of the total population.

The number of fully vaccinated people was 40,900,924, or 79.6 percent of the population, while 2,842,146 people received booster shots.