KATHMANDU, JANUARY 23

The national active Covid-19 caseload of Nepal climbed to 77,040 on Sunday as 5,598 people tested positive for the infection in past 24 hours.

Nepal recorded 5,598 new coronavirus infections in last 24 hours, pushing the nationwide tally to 910,394 while the death toll reached to 11,655 as four fatalities were recorded today.

Meanwhile, the total coronavirus recoveries stand at 821,699 with 1,416 discharges logged today.

As per the latest data provided by the health ministry, a total of 17,437 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours of which 13,377 were PCR tests while 4,060 were antigen tests. With this, a total of 5,121,662 PCR tests have been carried out till date.

Similarly, antigen tests have confirmed 865 positive cases in the past 24 hours. The total number of single-day infections from both the RT-PCR and antigen tests totals to 6,462.

Nepal's Covid-19 recovery rate stands at 90.3%, while the fatality rate stands at 1.4%.

Currently, there are 149 individuals in various quarantine facilities across Nepal.

Meanwhile, health authorities had recently performed gene sequencing on as many as 32 samples, of which 28 tested positive for the Omicron variant while the latter were Delta variants. The Health Ministry said that this is an indication that Omicron (87.5% of samples tested) is gradually replacing the delta variant which had wreaked havoc during the second wave of the pandemic.

The samples were tested as some of them had the S-gene missing, leading to a speculation of presence of Omicron variant.

In the past 24 hours, as many as 49,473 people received vaccines, including the booster dose, against Covid-19.