Mumbai, Sep 10 (IANS): Exactly 180 days after Maharashtra recorded its first two Covid-19 cases on March 9, the state on Wednesday touched a new high of coronavirus cases even as deaths remained in the high ranges like most days in September, health officials said here.

With a record 23,816 new cases -- climbing significantly from the previous peak of 23,350 just three days ago -- the state's total zoomed to 967,349 cases.

Adding 325 more fatalities, down from the peak of 423 (September 7), the state's death toll shot up to 27,787, including 55 old deaths which have now been included in the state's total.

There was one death roughly every 4 minutes and a staggering 992 new cases added every hour to the state's tally.

The state's recovery rate again dropped from 71.26 percent to 70.96 percent, while the current mortality (death) rate stood at 2.87 percent on Wednesday.

Against this, a total of 13,906 fully recovered patients returned home on Wednesday, taking the total number of discharges to 686,462 to date, considerably higher than the 252,374 active cases present in the state.

The day witnessed a sharp spike in fatalities in Sangli, Nagpur, Kolhapur and Solapur, even as four districts in the state reported zero deaths.

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the past 30 days, with 43 fatalities Mumbai's death toll rose to 7,985 while the number of corona cases shot up by another high of 2,227 to 160,744.

Of the total 8 circles, the Mumbai circle (MMR, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) remains on the edge as deaths spiral and cases pile up, with the fatalities shooting up by 83 to 13,13,584 and with the highest 6,234 new infectees, the total cases shot up to 375,963.

Pune district's COVID cases touched 212,563 to date with the fatalities increasing from 4,538 a day earlier to 4,584 now.

Thane district witnessed 148,690 cases while the death toll increased to 4,058.

With 66 more fatalities, the Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll increased to 5,923, while the case tally zoomed up by the highest spike of 6,591 cases to 257,659.

The Nashik circle recorded 2,679 fatalities and 122,670 cases, followed by the Kolhapur circle's 1,669 deaths and 58,586 cases, and Nagpur circle's 1,271 deaths and 55,188 cases.

Aurangabad circle had 1,020 fatalities and 38,210 cases, Latur circle recorded 999 fatalities and 35,257 cases, followed by Akola division with 553 deaths and 22,862 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine sharply increased from 15,57,305 to 16,11,280 now, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 38,141 to 37,644 on Wednesday.