With staggering 7,074 new coronavirus cases in a day, Maharashtra's total tally crossed the 2-lakh mark on Saturday apart from a record daily high of 295 deaths, health officials said here on Friday.
Mumbai:
With staggering 7,074 new coronavirus cases in a day, Maharashtra's total tally crossed the 2-lakh mark on Saturday apart from a record daily high of 295 deaths, health officials said here on Friday.
The number of fatalities in the state on Saturday shot up from the June-lowest of 62 to 295 -- highest ever after the earlier daily high of 248 deaths notched on June 23.
However, on June 16, Maharashtra had reported the highest 1,409 fatalities, taking into account reconciliation of earlier deaths, which drastically escalated the state toll.
With Saturday's 295 declared fatalities, the state death toll climbed from 8,376 a day earlier to 8,671 and total cases to 200,064 till date, both the highest in the country.
This comes to roughly one death recorded every 5 minutes and a staggering 295 new cases notched every hour in the state on Saturday.
The recovery rate in the state fell marginally from 54.24 per cent a day earlier to 54.02 per cent, while the mortality (death) rate stood at 4.33 per cent.
July started with three-digit high of deaths and 6K plus new patients daily for the past three days, causing massive concerns among the health officials.
The Health Department said of the total cases declared till date, 83,295 are 'active cases' (ill), which is lower than the number of cured patients, indicating a positive development.
On the positive side, 3,395 cured patients returned home on Saturday, taking the total discharge cases to 108,082.
Of the total 295 fatalities on Saturday, Thane alone notched a staggering 179 deaths, outstripping Mumbai for the first time since the pandemic broke out.
Mumbai notched 68 fatalities, pulling up the city's death toll to 4,830, whereas the number of corona patients shot up by 1,163 cases to touch 83,237.
Besides Thane's 179 and Mumbai's 68, 15 deaths were reported in Pune, 9 in Solapur, 7 in Jalgaon, 6 in Aurangabad, 5 in Palghar, 3 in Akola, 2 in Latur, and 1 in Yavatmal.
The MMR (Thane division) continues to be tense as deaths and cases continue to pile up, with a total of 6,312 Covid-19 fatalities and a whopping 4,045 new patients pushing up the number of positive cases to 141,828.
Thane cases have shot up to 45,833 with 1,254 fatalities to emerge as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state, and outstripped the country's commercial capital in the number of deaths (179) on Saturday.
Pune district comes third with 26,956 patients and 841 deaths till now.
Even the Pune division (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) fell way behind Thane and the MMR with 31,336 patients and 1,181 fatalities on Saturday.
The next major area of concern is Nashik division with 573 fatalities and 10,897 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad division with 312 deaths and 7,360 cases, and finally Akola division with 143 fatalities and 2,990 cases.
Kolhapur division has notched 55 deaths and 2,250 patients, Latur division had 51 fatalities and 1,174 cases, and finally Nagpur division recorded 19 deaths and 2,118 cases.
Among the eight divisions in the state, only Kolhapur and Nagpur recorded zero fatalities on Satuday, though there were new corona cases.
Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from yesterday's 589,448 to 596,038, while those in institutional quarantine decreased from 42,371 to 41,566 on Saturday.