With 8970 new cases of the novel coronavirus confirmed on Thursday Nepal’s COVID-19 tally has spiked to 368580.

In 20,367 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the past 24 hours, 8,970 persons were found infected with SARS-CoV-2, informed the Health Ministry in its daily update.

Similarly, out of 775 antigen tests done in the 24 hours, the virus infection was detected in 100 people.

There are 72,561 active cases of COVID-19 across the nation of which, 5,315 patients are admitted to various institutional isolations and 67,246 are placed in home isolation. Likewise, 314 people mostly those who had returned from abroad, are placed in quarantine.

Meanwhile, 2,707 COVID-19 patients receiving treatment in institutional isolation or staying in home isolation recovered from the infection in the last 24 hours. Nepal has now recorded 292,490 cases of recovery and the recovery rate is at 79.4 per cent.

Moreover, 54 virus-related fatalities were confirmed in past 24 hours, taking the nation's COVID-19 death toll to 3,529.