KATHMANDU, Jan 17: Nepal on Sunday reported the recovery of 400 COVID-19 patients taking the total number of recoveries in the country to 261,444. This accounts for 97.8 percent of the total confirmed cases --- 267,322--- since the first case was detected last year on January 23.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), there are as many as 3,919 active cases of the disease that originated in the Chinese province of Wuhan. As of Sunday afternoon, a total of 1.7 percent of the total infected people are yet to gain recovery, which is the lowest in South Asia in terms of ratio of recoveries to total confirmed infections.

Of the eight countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Bhutan has the highest percentage of active cases of 36 percent.

Pakistan, followed by the Himalayan kingdom, reported 22 percent active cases by Sunday. Sri Lanka, an island country has yet to witness the recovery of 13.6 percent of total infections while 11.7 percent of confirmed COVID-19 patients are awaiting recovery in Afghanistan.

According to the daily COVID-19 updates released by the ministry, Bangladesh still has nine percent , the Maldives has 5.7 and India two percent of active cases.

The data also shows that Nepal’s COVID-19 recovery rate is highest in South Asia while the lowest has been recorded in Bhutan (63.9 percent).

 
• COVID-19
 
• Nepal
 
• SAARC