Mumbai, Sep 21 (IANS): Maharashtra's Covid-19 recoveries on Monday touched a new high with 32,007 fully cured people returning home, while the number of new cases and deaths declined, Health Minister Rajesh Tope said here.

Maharashtra recorded 15,738 new cases on Monday, lower than the highest tally of 24,886 recorded on September 11, taking the state's Covid-19 tally to 12,24,380.

Adding 344 more fatalities, down from the peak of 515 recorded on September 15, the state's death toll increased to 33,015.

For the fourth consecutive day, the state's recovery rate jumped from 73.17 per cent to 74.84 per cent, while the current mortality rate stood at 2.07 per cent on Monday.

Against this, the highest ever 32,007 fully recovered people returned home, more than double the 15,738 fresh cases added during the day.

This has taken the total number of discharged patients to 916,348 till date, much higher than the 274,623 active cases currently present in the state.

As per the figures released on Monday, there was one death roughly every 4.18 minutes and 656 new cases added every hour to the state's tally.

Of the 344 deaths, Nagpur led the chart with 72 fatalities, followed by Pune (42), Mumbai (36), Sangli (20), Jalgaon (18), Thane (17), Dhule and Solapur (15 each), Nashik and Ahmednagar (12 each), Satara, Kolhapur, Osmanabad and Beed (8 each), Aurangabad (7), Ratnagiri and Latur (6 each), Amravati and Chandrapur (5 each), Wardha and Gondia (4 each), Nanded (3), Palghar and Washim (2 each), and Raigad, Nandurbar, Jalna, Hingoli, Parbhani and Yavatmal (1 each).

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the second day, Mumbai recorded 36 deaths on Monday, taking its death toll to 8,505, while the number of corona cases shot up by 1,837, the lowest in over a week, to 186,276.

Of the total 8 circles, the situation in Mumbai circle (MMR, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) remains alarming as deaths spiral and cases pile up, with the fatalities shooting up by 56 to 14,836 and with another spike of 3,979 new infectees, the total cases shot up to 439,180.

With another 65 fatalities, Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll increased to 7,110 and the daily case tally zoomed up by another 3,520 to 326,147.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from 18,49,217 to 18,58,924 now, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 35,644 to 35,517 on Monday.