Kathmandu, With 426 new cases of the novel coronavirus confirmed on Friday, the national COVID-19 tally has surged to 261,019.

“In 5,225 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the last 24 hours, 426 persons, 153 females and 273 males were found infected with SARS-CoV-2,” informed the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) in its regular update.

Currently, there are 6,048 active cases of COVID-19 across the nation. Of them, 2,890 patients are receiving treatment in institutional isolation and the remaining are in home isolation.

A total of 367 persons, mostly those who had returned from abroad, are placed in quarantine.

Meanwhile, 748 COVID-19 patients receiving treatment institutional isolation or staying in home isolation recovered from the infection in the last 24 hours. Nepal has now recorded 253,107 cases of recoveries and the recovery rate is at 97 per cent.

A total of eight people succumbed to the deadly virus in the last 24 hours and with this, the national COVID-19 related death tally has reached 1,864.