Mumbai, Sep 28 (IANS): For the first time in 28 days, Maharashtra's Covid-19 deaths and cases plummeted drastically, though Mumbai's total cases breached the 2-lakh mark, health officials said here on Monday.

After recording 184 fatalities on August 31, Maharashtra witnessed just 180 deaths on Monday, a significant drop from the peak of 515 deaths recorded on September 15, taking the state's death toll to 35,751.

The state recorded 11,921 new cases on Monday, the lowest since August 31 when there were 11,852 new infections -- and steeply falling from the peak tally of 24,886 recorded on September 11) -- taking the state's Covid tally to 13,51,153.

The state's recovery rate also shot up -- from 76.91 per cent to 77.71 per cent -- while the mortality rate stood at 2.65 per cent on Monday.

On a positive note, 19,932 fully recovered people returned home on Monday, taking the total number of discharges to 10,49,947 till date, much higher than the 265,033 active cases currently present in the state.

As per the figures released on Monday, there was one death roughly every 8 minutes and 497 new cases added every hour to the state's tally.

Of the 180 deaths, Mumbai led the chart with 40 fatalities, followed by Thane (24), Pune (19), Chandrapur (14), Satara (12), Kolhapur (10), Sangli and Yavatmal (8 each), Aurangabad, Hingoli and Amravati (5 each), Jalgaon and Solapur (4 each), Nashik, Osmanabad and Gadchiroli (3 each), Palghar, Beed and Nagpur (2 each), and Raigad, Ahmednagar, Ratnagiri, Latur, Nanded, Akola and Buldhana (1 each).

Continuing in the sub-50 range for the third day this month, Mumbai recorded 40 fatalities which took up its toll to 8,834, while the number of cases shot up by 2,055 to take the city's tally past the 2-lakh mark to 200,901.

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.

MMR's fatalities shot up by 67 to 15,533, and with another spike of 4,098 new infectees, the total cases shot up to 471,712.

With another of 35 fatalities, the Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll increased to 7,725 and the daily case tally zoomed up by 2,583 to 358,375 cases.

Nashik circle has so far recorded 3,607 fatalities and 178,439 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle's 2,771 deaths and 91,711 cases, and Nagpur circle's 2,344 deaths and 103,621 cases.

Latur circle recorded 1,458 deaths and 54,536 cases, Aurangabad circle had 1,309 fatalities and 51,167 cases, followed by Akola circle with 870 deaths and 40,046 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 19,75,923, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 30,467 to 29,922 on Monday.