By TRN Online, Kathmandu, Aug. 1: With 1,981 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed on Sunday, the nation's novel coronavirus tally has reached 697,370.

In 8,402 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the past 24 hours, a total of 1,981 persons were found infected with SARS-CoV-2, informed the Ministry of Health and Population in its daily update.

Likewise, the virus infection was detected in 587 people in 4,234 antigen tests performed in the last 24 hours.

Currently, there are 31,298 active cases of COVID-19 across the nation of which, 3,235 are admitted to various institutional isolation while 28,063 patients are placed in home isolation. Of the active patients, 677 are admitted to the ICU and 169 are under treatment with the ventilator facility.

Meanwhile, 2,020 COVID-19 patients receiving treatment in institutional isolation or staying in home isolation recovered from the infection in the last 24 hours. Nepal has now recorded 656,197 cases of recovery, and the recovery rate is at 94.1 per cent.

The Ministry of Health and Population on Sunday added 18 fatalities to the nation's COVID-19 death toll, which has now reached 9,875 and the death rate is 1.5 per cent.