By TRN Online, Kathmandu, Oct. 21: With 3,637 new cases of the novel coronavirus infection confirmed on Thursday, the national COVID-19 caseload has surged to 148,509.

"In 15,255 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the last 24 hours, as many as 3,637 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 44,877 active cases of COVID-19 of which, 13,339 patients are receiving treatment in institutional isolations and 31,538 are in home isolation. Some 3,751 people are placed in quarantine centers across the nation.

Of the active cases, 290 are admitted to the ICU and 77 are under treatment with ventilator facility.

Meanwhile, some 3,215 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 102,820 cases of recoveries and the recovery rate is at 69.2 per cent.

Furthermore, 21 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 812.