With 70 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed on Thursday, the nation's novel coronavirus tally has reached 977,269.

In 2,448 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the past 24 hours, a total of 70 persons were found infected with SARS-CoV-2, informed the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) in its regular update.

Likewise, the virus infection was detected in 35 people in 2,476 antigen tests performed in the last 24 hours.

Currently, there are 7,517 active cases of COVID-19 across the nation of which, 168 are admitted to various institutional isolation while 7,349 patients are placed in home isolation.

Of the active patients, 61 are admitted to the ICU and nine are under treatment with the ventilator facility.

Meanwhile, 320 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 957,808 cases of recovery, and the recovery rate is at 98 per cent.

The MoHP on Thursday added three COVID-19 related fatalities to the nation's COVID-19 death toll, which has now reached 11,944.