Mumbai, June 27 For the second consecutive day, Maharashtra Covid-19 cases again jumped above 5,000 at 5,318 on Saturday as against Friday's 5,024 while the state death toll touched 7,273, health officials said.
The state fatalities again catapulted from the June's lowest of 62 to 167, but still down from the highest death figure of 248 notched on June 23.
On June 16, the state had reported 1,409 fatalities, taking into account reconciliation of earlier deaths, which drastically escalated the toll.
With Saturday's fatalities, the state death toll climbed to 7,273 and total cases zoomed to 159,133 till date, both being the highest in the country.
The day's figures work out to roughly one death recorded every 9 minutes and a staggering 222 new cases notched every hour.
After three days, the recovery rate marginally improved from 52.25 per cent to 52.94 per cent, while the mortality rate stood at 4.57 per cent.
For most of June, the state has been recording three-digit highs of deaths and since the past couple of days, over 5,000 new patients.
The Health Department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 67,600 are active cases.
Of Saturday's 167 fatalities, Mumbai alone notched 105 deaths - pulling up the city death toll to 4,284 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here shot up by 1,402 cases to touch 74,252.
There were also 19 deaths in Pune, 10 in Jalgaon, seven in Dhule, six in Solapur, three each in Thane, Nashik and Ahmednagar, two each in Palghar, and Latur, and one each in Raigad, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, Aurangabad, Osmanabad and Jalna.
On the positive side, a total of 4,430 fully cured patients returned home on Saturday, taking the number of those discharged to 84,245 now.
The MMR (Thane Division) remains a zone of concern with a total of 5,299 Covid-19 deaths, and with a whopping 3,479 new patients, the number of positive cases went up to 115,385.
Thane - with 32,735 cases and 819 fatalities - has emerged as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.
Pune district comes third with 19,761 patients and 694 deaths till now. But Pune Division ranks second (after MMR) with 23,243 patients and 979 deaths.
The next major region of concern is Nashik Division with 498 fatalities and 8,040 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad Division with 245 deaths and 5,409 cases, and Akola Division with 121 fatalities and 2,472 cases.
Kolhapur Division has notched 49 deaths and 1,879 patients, Latur Division had 42 fatalities and 897 cases, and finally Nagpur Division recorded 17 deaths and 1,736 cases. Two divisions - Nagpur and Akola - recorded zero fatalities, though there were new Covid-19 positive cases.
Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from to 565,161 now, while those in institutional quarantine increased to 38,925.
( With inputs from IANS )