By TRN Online, Kathmandu, Oct. 17: With 3,167 new cases of the novel coronavirus infection confirmed on Saturday, the national COVID-19 caseload has surged to 129,304.

"In 15,438 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the last 24 hours, as many as  3,167 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 38,737 active cases of COVID-19 of which, 13,299 patients are receiving treatment in institutional isolations and 25,438 are in home isolation. Some 4,715 people are currently placed in quarantine centers across the nation.

Of the active cases, 290 are admitted to the ICU and 66 are receiving treatment with ventilator facility.

Meanwhile, some 1,800 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 89,840 cases of recoveries and the recovery rate is at 69.4 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 727.