By TRN Online, Kathmandu, Aug. 19: With 2,321 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed on Thursday, the nation's novel coronavirus tally has reached 742,228.

In 11,946 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the past 24 hours, a total of 2,321 persons were found infected with SARS-CoV-2, informed the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) during the weekly in its daily update.

Likewise, the virus infection was detected in 754 people in 4,492 antigen tests performed in the last 24 hours.

Of the 77 districts, 21 districts currently have more than 500 active cases of COVID-19. Until a month earlier, only 12 districts had over 500 active cases.

Currently, there are 40,500 active cases of COVID-19 across the nation of which, 3,386 are admitted to various institutional isolation while 37,114 patients are placed in home isolation. Currently, 385 people are placed in quarantine.

Of the active patients, 739 are admitted to the ICU and 168 are under treatment with the ventilator facility.

Meanwhile, 2,126 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 691,299 cases of recovery, and the recovery rate is at 93.1 per cent.

The Health Ministry on Thursday added 33 fatalities to the nation's COVID-19 death toll, which has now reached 10,429.