Mumbai, Sep 12 (IANS): After recording the highest Covid-19 deaths and new cases during the past few weeks, Maharashtra breathed easy on Saturday with fewer infections and fatalities, health officials said here.

With 22,084 new cases - lower than the peak of 24,886 (September 11), the state's total tally zoomed from 10,15,681 to 10,37,765 cases now.

Adding 391 more fatalities, considerably lower than the peak of 495 (September 10), the state's death toll rose from 28,724 to 29,115 now.

There was one death roughly every 4 minutes and a whopping 920 new cases added every hour to the tally.

The recovery rate again dropped marginally from 70.04 per cent to 70.02 per cent, while the current mortality (death) rate stood at 2.81 per cent on Saturday.

Against this, a high of 279,768 fully recovered patients returned home, taking the total number of discharged patients from 715,023 to 728,512 till date - much higher than the 279,768 'active cases' (ill) currently in the state.

Of the 391 deaths, Pune continued to lead with 61 fatalities besides 42 in Mumbai, 40 in Nagpur, 31 in Sangli, 23 in Kolhapur, 22 in Solapur, 18 in Satara, 17 in Ahmednagar, 16 each in Thane and Nanded, 12 in Aurangabad, 10 each in Raigad and Nashik - in the higher bracket.

There were 9 fatalities in Palghar, 8 in Amravati, 7 each in Jalgaon and Sindhudurg, 6 in Parbhani, 5 each in Dhule and Latur, Akola, 4 each in Osmanabad and Yavatmal, 2 each in Ratnagiri, Beed and Washim, 1 each in Nandurbar, Bhandara, Gondia and Gadchiroli, besides 3 from other states/foreigners - in the lower bracket.

The day witnessed a sharp spike in fatalities from Nagpur, Sangli, Kolhapur, Solapur, Satara, Ahmednagar, Nanded and Aurangabad, even as 5 districts in the state reported zero deaths.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home-quarantine increased from 16,47,742 to 16,52,955 now - while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 38,487 to 38,275 on Saturday.