Mumbai, Sep 23 (IANS): A day after cooling off, Maharashtra's Covid-19 deaths and new cases registered a fresh spike even as the fatalities in Mumbai Metropolitan Region crossed 15,000, health officials said here on Wednesday.

The state recorded 21,029 new cases - lower than the highest tally of 24,886 (September 11) - which pushed the state's total up from 12,42,770 to 12,63,799 cases till date.

Adding 479 more fatalities, the state's death toll increased from 33,407 to 33,886 now.

For the fifth consecutive day, the state's recovery rate jumped - from 75.36 per cent to 75.65 per cent - while the current mortality rate stood at 2.68 per cent on Wednesday.

Against this, 19,476 fully recovered patients returned home taking up the total of discharged patients from 936,554 to 956,030 till date - much higher than the 273,477 active cases currently in the state.

As per the figures on Wednesday, there was one death roughly every 3 minutes and 876 new cases added every hour to the state's tally.

Of the 479 deaths, Kolhapur led the state with 63 fatalities, besides 61 in Pune, 58 in Nagpur, 49 in Mumbai, 39 in Thane, 36 in Sangli, 30 in Raigad, 28 in Satara, 16 in Ahmednagar, 14 in Solapur, 13 each in Nashik and Parbhani - in the higher bracket.

There were 8 fatalities in Nanded, 7 each in Palghar, Osmanabad, Amravati and Wardha, 5 in Jalgaon, 4 in Gondia, 2 each in Ratnagiri, Aurangabad, Latur, Beed and Bhandara, 1 each in Dhule, Jalna, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli - in the lower bracket.

Hovering around the 50s range for the fourth day, Mumbai recorded 49 deaths - and the toll increased from 8,555 to 8,604 while the number of corona cases shot up by 2,360, and jumped from 187,904 to 190,264 now.

Of the total 8 circles, the situation in Mumbai circle (MMR - comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) remains on the brink as deaths spiral and cases pile up.

The MMR crossed the 15,000-mark with the fatalities shooting up by 125 - from 14,956 a day earlier to 15,081 and with another spike of 5,663 new infectees, the total cases shot up from 443,054 the previous day to 448,717 now.

With another 103 fatalities, the Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll increased from 7,200 to 7,303 and the daily case tally zoomed up by another 4,962 - from 330,787 a day earlier to 335,749 cases now.

Nashik circle recorded 3,397 fatalities and 166,911 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle's 2,511 deaths and 84,799 cases, and Nagpur circle crossed the 2K mark by recording 2,097 deaths and 92,072 cases.

Latur circle recorded 1,365 deaths and 49,777 cases, Aurangabad circle had 1,250 fatalities and 48,059 cases, followed by Akola circle with 762 deaths and 36,323 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased - from 18,70,200 to 18,75,424 now - while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 34,982 to 34,457 on Wednesday.