As of  Saturday, South Korea has nine-thousand-478 accumulated cases of COVID-19. Of this total, three-hundred-63 are imported cases.

For the first time Saturday, the number of recoveries has surpassed the number of patients being treated under quarantine. The milestone comes 68 days after the country reported its very first infection on January 20.

According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), South Korea reported 146 new infections on Saturday, 73 of them coming from the hardest hit Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province.

The total cases in these two regions stand at well over 78-hundred while the wider capital region of metropolitan Seoul also has more than 870 cases.

To date, the death toll rose by five on Saturday to 144, raising the mortality rate to one-point-52 percent. However fatalities reach as high as 16 percent among those 80 and older.