KATHMANDU, May 29: As many as 96 people died of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) disease on Friday taking the death tally to 7,047 in the country. According to The Ministry of Health and Population, 4,015 people have died of the viral disease in the past two months.

The country recorded 3,032 deaths from COVID-19 before March 20 but the second wave of the pandemic spiked the number of deaths in the past two months. The death rate from COVID-19 has increased to 1.4 percent in Nepal compared to the 0.2 percent death rate last year. 

Experts say that the spread of the new variant of COVID-19 over a short period of time to many people and the lack of medical facilities and late treatment of the infected patients in hospitals have led to an increase in the number of deaths in the country. Dr Krishna Prasad Paudel, the head of National Epidemiology and Disease Control Division, said “The lack of care and treatment for the overwhelming number of infected patients arriving at the hospitals is also one of the factors increasing the death tally.” As the infection rate decreases with the prohibitory orders, the number of deaths decrease as well, he added.

A total of 20,110 samples were tested on Friday, out of which 6,951 tested positive for COVID-19. So far the total number of COVID-19 infections has reached 549,111 in Nepal with 296,245 infections recorded after the second wave of the pandemic. Among the tests conducted, the rate of COVID-19 infection was 34 percent on Friday. 

There are currently 113,314 active cases of COVID-19 across the country out of which, 108,444 are in home isolation while 7,950 are in institutional isolation wards. As many as 1,627 people are undergoing treatment in ICUs and 450 are on ventilators. 

 
• Deaths
 
• Coronavirus
 
• Nepal