Mumbai, Aug 30 (IANS): For the second straight day, Maharashtra recorded over 16,000 Covid-19 cases even as the state death toll dropped below the 300 mark after almost a week, health officials said here on Sunday.

At 16,408 new cases, the state recorded its second-highest tally in two days, after 16,867 on Saturday, taking the state's total to 780,689, while with 296 more fatalities, the death toll shot up to 24,399. Both are the highest in the country.

There was one death roughly every 5 minutes and a whopping 684 new cases added every hour to the state tally, with the load of deaths and cases gradually shifting to non-metro areas.

The state recovery rate decreased from 72.58 per cent to 72.04 per cent, while the mortality rate stood at 3.13 per cent on Sunday.

Meanwhile, 7,690 fully recovered patients returned home, taking the total number of discharged patients to 562,401 till date - considerably higher than the 193,548 active cases in the state.

Of the 296 fatalities, Nagpur circle led the state with 45 deaths, followed by 39 in Pune, 30 each in Mumbai and Thane and 28 in Kolhapur.

There were 18 fatalities in Sangli, 14 in Palghar, 10 in Jalgaon, nine in Ahmednagar, six each in Nashik, Solapur, Aurangabad, Latur, and Amravati, five each in Raigad, Nandurbar, Satara, Ratnagiri, and Nanded, four in Parbhani, three each in Dhule, Beed, and Akola, two in Osmanabad, one in Yavatmal, besides two from other states.

While there was an abrupt spurt in fatalities from Nagpur and Kolhapur, on the positive side, 10 districts in the state reported zero deaths.

Remaining below the 50 mark for the past 18 days, Mumbai, with 30 fatalities, saw its death toll increase to 7,626 and the number of corona cases increased by 1,237 to 144,626 now.

Of the total 8 circles, the Mumbai circle (MMR) continued to see cases and deaths pile up with the fatalities shooting up by 79 to 12,771 and with 3,585 new infectees, the total cases went up to 331,047.

Pune district's cases stand at 173,174 till date with the fatalities increasing to 4,060 now.

Thane district, on the third spot, has 131,352 cases and the death toll stands at 3,777 now.

With 50 more fatalities, the Pune circle's death toll increased to 5,152 and the case tally zoomed up by a staggering 4,735 to reach 206,015.

Nashik circle recorded 2,826 fatalities and 96,228 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle with 1,209 deaths and 39,721 cases, and Aurangabad circle with 906 fatalities and 30,985 cases.

Jumping up from the 7th to the 6th spot on Sunday in terms of fatalities and cases, Nagpur circle recorded 787 deaths and 33,627 cases, Latur circle had 759 fatalities and 25,224 cases, followed by Akola with 457 deaths and 17,113 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine decreased to 13,09,676 now - while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down to 35,373.