By TRN Online, Kathmandu, Aug. 17: With 2,613 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed on Wednesday, the nation's novel coronavirus tally has reached 739,907.

In 11,839 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the past 24 hours, a total of 2,613 persons were found infected with SARS-CoV-2, informed Dr. Krishna Prasad Poudel, spokesperson at the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) during the weekly press briefing.

Dr. Poudel said that the RT-PCR tests done in the last 24 hours reported a positivity rate of 22.1 per cent. "This means, 22 in every 100 people are found infected with the virus," he said.

Likewise, the virus infection was detected in 790 people in 4,999 antigen tests performed in the last 24 hours.

Of the new infections, 993 were confirmed in the Kathmandu Valley including in 711 Kathmandu, 160 in Lalitpur, and 122 in Bhaktapur.

The positivity rate is the highest in Karnali Province, followed by Gandaki Province and Province 1.

"The effective reproduction rate of the novel coronavirus in Nepal is 1.00 which is the third-highest in the SAARC nations," said Dr. Poudel. He added that the average positivity rate of the nation was at 20 per cent.

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 40,338 active cases of COVID-19 across the nation of which, 3,532 are admitted to various institutional isolation while 36,806 patients are placed in home isolation. Currently, 457 people are placed in quarantine.

Of the active patients, 770 are admitted to the ICU and 186 are under treatment with the ventilator facility.

Meanwhile, 2,104 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 679,173 cases of recovery, and the recovery rate is at 92 per cent.

The Health Ministry on Wednesday added 42 fatalities to the nation's COVID-19 death toll, which has now reached 10,396.

"As of August 16, a total of 16.19 per cent population of Nepal have been vaccinated with the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 11.98 per cent have been fully vaccinated," Dr. Poudel added.