South Korea's new COVID-19 cases exceeded 88,000 on Wednesday, continuing the upward trend amid fears over a further spike in winter with one in every six people now having suffered reinfection.

The country reported 88,172 new COVID-19 infections, including 69 from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 28,390,646, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said.

The virus curve is going up in a steady rebound of daily infection numbers amid fears of a winter resurgence. The per-day counts topped 80,000 last week, the highest level in about three months.

The KDCA said in a regular briefing that one in every six people have been reinfected with COVID-19 as variants, like the BN.1 and BF.7, have been spreading.

The public health agency said the weekly infection cases stood at 455,364 in the second week of December, a 10.3 percent jump from a week earlier. It maintained the COVID-19 risk level at "medium."

On Wednesday, the KDCA reported 59 more COVID-19 deaths, raising the death toll to 31,549. The fatality rate stood at 0.11 percent.

The number of critically ill patients stood at 512, down seven from the previous day.

Health authorities are expected to announce Friday plans for a phased removal of the indoor mask mandate, the last remaining COVID-19 restriction in South Korea. But whether the decision will be made official remains to be seen as experts have suggested that it might be too early to ease the rule, given the recent virus uptrend.

The government is considering lifting the mask rule for indoor spaces beginning in the third week of January, with some exceptions to be applied at crowded places like public transportation and medical facilities. (Yonhap)