Mumbai, Jul 29 (IANS): Maharashtra's Covid-19 cases on Wednesday surpassed the 4-lakh figure, while the state recorded the highest number of deaths (298) for the second time in one week, health officials said.

After a lull of five days, the state notched 9,211 new Covid cases, considerably up from the 7,000 range seen in later July, but still down from the highest-ever tally of 10,576 on July 22.

With the fresh fatalities, the death toll went up to 14,463, while the total cases reached 400,651 - both highest in the country.

Maharashtra Covid-19 tally is now higher than Peru which has 395,005 cases, ranking 7th on the Worldometer, and slightly lower than Mexico, which has 402,697 cases and 6th rank on the global corona dashboard.

According to Wednesday's figures, there was one death roughly every 5 minutes and a staggering 384 new cases every hour.

The state recovery rate, however, increased for the fourth consecutive day, moving up from 59.34 per cent to 59.84 per cent, while the current mortality rate stood at 3.61 per cent.

The Health Department said that of the total cases, 146,129 are active.

Also on the positive side, 7,478 recovered patients returned home on Wednesday - the highest till date - taking the total number of discharged patients to 239,755.

Of the new fatalities, Thane again shot to the top with 64 deaths followed by Pune and Mumbai with 60 fatalities each.

Mumbai's toll has now shot up to 6,247 and the number of corona cases increased by 1,109 to 111,991.

There were also 17 fatalities in Aurangabad, 15 in Solapur, 12 in Jalgaon, eight in Palghar, seven each in Raigad and Satara, five each in Dhule, Nashik, and Nagpur, four each in Kolhapur, Jalna, and Akola, three each in Nandurbar, Nanded, and Amravati, two each in Parbhani, Latur, Beed, and Buldhana, and one each in Hingoli, Osmanabad, and Washim besides 1 from another state.

The MMR (Thane division) saw its current toll shooting up by 139 to 9,414 and a staggering 3,324 new cases, taking the number to 232,923.

Thane's cases have touched 90,283 with 2,495 fatalities to emerge as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state, while Pune district has 82,916 cases, with the death toll increasing to 1,945 now.

With 82 more deaths, the Pune division's death toll has reached 2,559 and the case tally is 94,961.

Nashik division has recorded 1,136 fatalities and 31,169 cases, followed by Aurangabad division with 578 deaths and 16,234 cases, Akola Division with 242 fatalities and 6,843 cases, Kolhapur division with 210 deaths and 8,038 cases, Latur division with 198 fatalities and 4,684 cases, and Nagpur division recorded 78 deaths and 5,436 cases - the only division now in the sub-100 death figure range.

Continuing the trend for the second week, all the eight divisions recorded fatalities on Wednesday, while Chandrapur still remains a zero Covid death district.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 888,623, while those in institutional quarantine went down to 40,777.