Maharashtra's daily Covid-19 cases continued in the upper reaches, scaling the 8,000 mark on Monday, but deaths again dropped below the 200-level even as Mumbai Metropolitan Region crossed the 2 lakh tally, health officials said.
Mumbai:
The state notched 8,240 new cases, lower than the peak of 9,518 on July 19, spelling some relief.
The number of deaths in the state dipped from Sunday's 258 to 176 on Monday.
With the fresh fatalities, the state's death toll went up to 12,030, while the total cases touched 318,695 - both highest in the country.
According to Monday's figures, there was one death roughly every 8 minutes and a staggering 343 new cases every hour.
The recovery rate marginally improved from 54.62 per cent a day earlier to 54.92 per cent on Monday, while the current mortality rate stood at 3.77 per cent.
The Health Department said that of the total cases till date, 131,334 are active cases.
On the other hand, 5,460 recovered patients returned home on Monday, taking the total number of discharged patients to 175,029.
For the first time in recent weeks, Pune's daily toll of 42 overshot Mumbai's 41.
Mumbai's toll has risen to 5,755 and the number of corona cases increased by 1,035 to touch 102,423 now.
Apart from Mumbai and Pune, there were 33 deaths in Thane, 21 in Jalgaon, six in Raigad, five in Solapur, four each in Kolhapur and Sangli, three in Aurangabad, two each in Palghar, Satara, Amravati, Buldhana and Nashik, and one each in Dhule, Jalna, Latur, Nanded, Washim, and Wardha. One was from another state.
The MMR (Thane division) continues to see deaths spiral and cases pile up, with the current toll at 8,220 and a staggering 3,789 new cases, pushing up the number of cases to 203,270.
Thane cases have touched 76,749 with 2,069 fatalities to emerge as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai.
Pune district has 57,024 cases, with the death toll at 1,401 on Monday.
The Pune division's death toll has reached 1,872 with the case tally touching 65,286 - but it remains far behind MMR and Thane district.
Nashik division has 919 fatalities and 21,696 cases, followed by Aurangabad division with 439 deaths and 12,303 cases, Akola division with 193 fatalities and 4,833 cases, Kolhapur division with 112 deaths and 4,701 cases, Latur division 121 fatalities and 2,840 cases, and Nagpur division 39 deaths and 3,506 cases.
All the eight divisions recorded fatalities on Monday, while Chandrapur has kept its zero Covid death district status till date, though all divisions and districts in the state have notched fresh cases.
Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 765,781, while those in institutional quarantine went down to 45,434 on Monday.