Mumbai, Jul 5 (IANS): Maharashtra's Covid-19 situation improved a bit with the state recording 6,555 new cases - down from Satuday's highest of 7,074 cases - and fatalities dropped sharply to 151 from 295 a day earlier, health officials said here on Sunday.

With Sunday's fatalities, the state death toll climbed to 8,822 and total cases zoomed to 206,619 till date, both being the highest in the country.

At the current number of cases, Maharashtra has overtaken Germany which ranks 15 on the Worldometer with 197,418 patients. In June, the state had recorded more daily patients than the UK, and overtaken Canada and France in terms of total patients.

Sunday's figures mean roughly one death recorded every 10 minutes and a staggering 273 new cases notched every hour in the state.

The recovery rate in the state inched up to 54.08 per cent, while the mortality rate stood at 4.27 percent.

July has seen three-digit deaths and over 6,000 cases daily.

The Health Department said of the total number of cases, 86,040 are active cases.

On the positive side, 3,658 fully cured patients returned home on Sunday, taking the number of those discharged to 111,740.

Of the 151 fatalities, Mumbai alone notched 69 - pulling up the city death toll to 4,899 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients shot up by 1,287 cases to touch 84,524.

There were 31 deaths in Pune, 16 in Thane, 11 in Aurangabad, 10 in Jalgaon, four each in Palghar, Dhule and Solapur, and two in Nashik.

Given the grim situation in Thane, Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis has launched a tour of some of the worst-hit towns in the district and called for more tests, ventilators, ICU beds, and other facilities to curb the Covid cases and fatalities in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).

The MMR (Thane division) continues to be tense as deaths and cases continue to pile up, with a total of 6,401 Covid-19 fatalities and a whopping 3,941 new patients pushing up the number of positive cases to 145,769.

Thane cases have shot up to 47,935 with 1,270 fatalities - to emerge as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state. on Saturday, Thane had recorded its highest ever 179 cases, outstripping the Mumbai toll for the first time since the pandemic outbreak.

Pune district comes third with 28,142 patients and 872 deaths till now.

The Pune division (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) remains behind Thane and the MMR with 32,693 patients and 1,216 fatalities.

The next major region of concern is Nashik division with 589 fatalities and 11,477 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad division with 323 deaths and 7,709 cases, and Akola division with 143 fatalities and 3,128 cases.

Kolhapur division has notched 55 deaths and 2,308 patients, latur Division had 51 fatalities and 1,225 cases, and finally, Nagpur division recorded 19 deaths and 2,177 cases.

Among the eight divisions in the state, as many as four - Kolhapur, Latur, Akola and Nagpur - recorded zero fatalities on Sunday, though there were new cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 604,463 now, while those in institutional quarantine increased to 46,062.