By TRN Online, Kathmandu, Oct. 18: With 2,942 new cases of the novel coronavirus infection confirmed on Sunday, the national COVID-19 caseload has surged to 132,246.

"In 14,875 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the last 24 hours, as many as  2,942 persons were found to have been infected with SARS-CoV-2," informed Dr. Jageshwor Gautam, spokesperson of the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) in the regular press briefing today.

Currently, there are 39,341 active cases of COVID-19 of which, 12,933 patients are receiving treatment in institutional isolations and 26,408 are in home isolation. Some 4,831 people are currently placed in quarantine centers across the nation.

Of the active cases, 301 are admitted to the ICU and 66 are receiving treatment with ventilator facility.

Meanwhile, some 2,326 COVID-19 patients, either receiving treatment at various health facilities or staying in home isolation, recovered from the infection in the last 24 hours. Nepal has now registered 92,166 cases of recoveries and the recovery rate is at 69.7 per cent.

Furthermore, 12 patients receiving treatment at various health facilities across the nation succumbed to the novel coronavirus infection in the last 24 hours. Nepal's COVID-19 death toll has now reached 739.