Mumbai, June 24 Maharashtra on Wednesday notched 208 Covid-19 deaths - down by 40 from Tuesday's 248 fatalities, while recording a new high of 3,890 positive cases, health officials said.
The deaths again shot up from the June's lowest of 62 to 208, including 72 on Wednesday and the rest (136) reconciled figures of the unconfirmed fatalities in the recent past.
Earlier, on June 16, the state had reported 1,409 fatalities taking into account reconciliation of earlier deaths, which drastically escalated the toll.
With this, the state death toll climbed from Tuesday's 6,531 to 6,739 and total cases shot up to 142,900 till date, both being the highest in the country.
This comes to roughly one death recorded every 20 minutes (taking into account only Wednesday's 72 deaths), and a whopping 162 new cases notched every hour in the state on Wednesday.
After several days, the recovery rate again improved and went up from 51.64 per cent, and the mortality (death) rate stood at 4.72 per cent.
For most days in June, the state has been recording three-digit highs of deaths and 3,000-plus figures of new patients, causing huge concerns.
The health department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 62,354 are active cases - and this number is lower (favourable) vis-a-vis the number of patients cured, indicating a positive trend.
Of the total 208 fatalities declared on Wednesday, Mumbai alone notched 120 deaths taking the city's death toll up to 3,964 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here went up by 1,118 cases to touch 69,528.
Besides Mumbai's 120 deaths, Thane saw 22 deaths, 17 in Solapur, 14 in Nashik, 13 in Pune, 9 in Jalgaon, 3 in Akola, 2 each in Buldhana, Ratnagiri and Osmanabad, 1 each in Nandurbar, Jalna and Satara, besides one from another state.
On the positive side, a total of 4,161 fully cured patients - the second highest till date - returned home Wednesday, taking the number of those discharged to 73,792 now - relatively higher than the 62,354 active cases currently.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (Thane Division) remains a jittery issue with a total of 4,923 Covid-19 deaths, and the number of positive cases touching 104,325.
Thane - with 27,880 cases and 773 fatalities - has emerged as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.
Pune district stands third with 17,445 patients and 637 deaths till now. But Pune Division ranks second (after MMR) with 20,689 patients and 910 deaths.
The next major region of concern is Nashik Division with 456 deaths and 6,583 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad Division with 218 fatalities and 4,611 cases, and finally Akola Division with 115 deaths and 2,304 cases.
Kolhapur Division notched 46 deaths and 1,760 patients, Latur Division had 35 deaths and 826 cases, and finally Nagpur Division recorded 15 deaths and 1,684 cases.
Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine decreased from Tuesday's 605,141 to 557,948 now, while those in institutional quarantine shot up from 26,572 to 33,581.
Of the total 823,775 laboratory samples tested in 103 labs, 17.34 per cent (142,900) have tested positive so far.
( With inputs from IANS )