As many as 53 coronavirus infections were reported in a single day from two virus clusters in a city in the Seoul metropolitan area, municipal officials said Tuesday.

The latest infection clusters occurred at a religious facility and a cram school in Bucheon, a Gyeonggi Province city on the southwestern outskirts of Seoul, the officials said.

The religious facility, whose name was withheld, reported 20 coronavirus cases among its believers and others, while 33 students and lecturers from the same cram school were diagnosed with COVID-19, they noted.

The officials suspect that the two Bucheon clusters may be correlated to each other, as one cram school lecturer is said to have lived in the religious facility's male dormitory.

They speculate that the massive virus infections from the two Bucheon clusters seem to be tied to the lecturer who showed symptoms of the coronavirus early this month. 

They said the city's quarantine authorities are conducting epidemiological investigations to track the exact transmission routes of the confirmed patients.

The municipal authorities have also imposed a no-assembly order on the religious facility, they added. (Yonhap)