South Korea’s daily COVID-19 infections spiked during the 24 hours of Tuesday to hit an all-time high of over 340,000, increasing more rapidly than the country’s health authorities had expected.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on Wednesday, the country added 342,446 new COVID-19 cases. It was up 139,726 from the previous day’s 202,720.

The previous record was the 266,847 reported Friday last week.

The daily figure has increased faster than the government had expected. Health authorities previously said the omicron wave here would peak at around 350,000 in mid-March.

Experts here said it will still take two or three more weeks for the omicron wave to peak, and the daily case count is likely to keep going up based on the current trend.

Local research institutions had anticipated that the government’s recent decision to ease the country’s social distancing rules could worsen the current omicron wave.

A rise in infections among the student population was anticipated since schools recently started in-person classes. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Education announced that a total of 189,058 COVID-19 cases were found among students and school staff between March 2-7.

South Korea is also bracing for another upsurge with the presidential election on Wednesday as the government has allowed infected voters to cast their ballots.

The latest tally has pushed the total caseload to reach 5,212,118 as of midnight Tuesday, which accounts for 10.2 percent of the country’s 51 million population.

Virus cases have skyrocketed after the omicron variant began to spread rapidly in February.

In South Korea, the total caseload had progressed relatively slowly, taking 748 days for the figure to surpass 1 million in early February, more than two years since the country reported the first COVID-19 case.

In less than a month, the figure had jumped to 3 million by the end of February. By Friday, it topped 4 million and then took only four days to surpass the 5 million mark.

Overwhelmed by the sudden escalation in cases, the country is also struggling to cope with COVID-19 testing.

According to the government, the country is capable of administering some 850,000 polymerase chain reaction tests a day, but over a million people have had to wait several hours to get PCR tests these days. This has been slowing down the overall medical response against the omicron wave, the government noted.

Faced with the shortage of medical resources to better respond to the crisis, the government said it can replace PCR tests with rapid antigen tests. The government may announce a decision on Friday, it added.

Along with the recent increases in daily infections, the number of critically ill patients continue to remain high as well. On Tuesday, the number of severe cases came to 1,087 from 1,007 a day earlier.

The government anticipated that severe cases could reach as many as 2,700 by the end of March.

The country also added 158 more COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, down from the previous day’s 186. The death toll reached 9,440, and the fatality rate was 0.18 percent.