The Ministry of Health and Population confirms 659 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday. With this the nation's novel coronavirus tally has reached 796618.

The Ministry of Health and Population said that in 5598 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the past 24 hours, a total of 659 persons were found infected with new coronavirus.

According to the Ministry, the virus infection was detected in 208 people in 2621 antigen tests performed in the last 24 hours.

The Ministry said that there are currently, there are 17,642 active cases of COVID-19 across the nation of which, 1,271 are admitted to various institutional isolation while 16,371 patients are placed in home isolation. Currently, 239 people are placed in quarantine.

Of the active patients, 350 are admitted to the ICU and 112 are under treatment with the ventilator facility.

Meanwhile, 1,123 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 767,819 cases of recovery, and the recovery rate is at 96.4 per cent.

The Health Ministry on Saturday added nine fatalities to the nation's COVID-19 death toll, which has now reached 11,157.