Kathmandu, Sept 18  The country witnessed the highest single day spike of COVID-19 cases at 2,020 in the past 24 hours. Among them 1, 381 were male and 639 were female.

With this, the COVID-19 caseload reached 61,593 in the country since the first case reported in January. Similarly, seven new COVID-19 casualties were reported in the last 24 hours. With this, 390 persons across the country succumbed to COVID-19 till date. A total of 11,458 PCR tests were conducted today in various labs across the country, informed Dr Jageshower Gautam, Spokesperson at the Ministry of Health and Population. In a daily press briefing organized by the Ministry of Health and Population, Spokesperson Gautam shared that 43,820 COVID-19 persons were recovered from the infection and have been discharged from isolation facilities. In the past 24 hours, 871 COVID-19 infected individuals returned their home upon the full recovery.

But among the infected ones, 173 are being treated in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) while 36 are receiving treatment in the ventilators, Gautam said. So far, PCR tests were conducted on 894,000 persons suspected to have contracted the flu-like infection. He said that Rasuwa, Dolpa, Humla, Solukhumbu and Mustang districts have no COVID-19 patients. The number of actively infected ones stands at 17, 383. There are 9,295 COVID-19 infected persons staying in institutional isolation while 8,088 infected ones are being treated at home-isolation.

Likewise, the Kathmandu Valley reported 859 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours among them 698 are from Kathmandu, 82 from Lalitpur and 79 from Bhaktapur district. There are altogether 15, 238 COVID-19 cases recorded in the Valley as of now. –