Kathmandu: Nepal government ruled out the possibility of finding more survivors buried in the rubble from massive earthquake as it announced the death toll had risen to 6,621.
"It has already been one week since the disaster," home ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal said.
"We are trying our best in rescue and relief work but now I don't think that there is any possibility of survivors under the rubble."
As well as updating the death toll, Dhakal put the number of injured at 14,023.
The 7.9-magnitude quake, which was the deadliest in Nepal for more than 80 years, devastated vast swathes of the country when it erupted around midday on April 25 and reduced much of the capital Kathmandu to ruins.
While multiple teams of rescuers from more than 20 countries have been using sniffer dogs and heat-seeking equipment to find survivors in the rubble, no one has been pulled alive since Thursday evening.
More than 100 people were also killed in neighbouring India and China.
Unprecedented damage
Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat said Nepal would need at least $2 billion to rebuild homes, hospitals, government offices and historic buildings and appealed for international backing.
"This is just an initial estimate and it will take time to assess the extent of damage and calculate the cost of rebuilding," Mahat said.
Prime Minister Sushil Koirala had told Reuters that the death toll from the quake could reach 10,000.
That would surpass the 8,500 who died in a 1934 earthquake, the last disaster on this scale to hit the nation sandwiched between India and China.
Home ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal said that though the 1934 quake was more powerful, fewer people lived in the Kathmandu valley then.
"The scale of reconstruction will be unprecedented," Dhakal said.
While international aid has poured in, some Nepalis have accused the government of being too slow to distribute it.
"There have been cases where villages have pelted stones on trucks carrying aid and food supplies. They must have been really hungry and angry to do so," said Purna Shanker, who works at the government's commodity trading office.
In Sundarkhula, a village close to the quake's epicentre west of Kathmandu, villagers said they were searching their destroyed homes for food.
Bharat Regmi, 28, said he jumped out of the first floor as the quake lifted his house from its foundations. When he went back a few days later, he and two of his friends found a bag of potatoes in the rubble.
"We are living on water and whatever we can dig out from the house," he said, standing under steady rain near the highway to Kathmandu.
Later, he crept back under a thin orange sheet, shared with about a dozen other villagers.
Tensions have also flared between foreigners and Nepalis desperate to be evacuated.
In the Himalayas, climbing is set to reopen on Mount Everest next week after damage caused by avalanches is repaired, although many have abandoned their ascents.
An avalanche killed 18 climbers and sherpa mountain guides at the Everest base camp.
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