Mumbai, Oct 3 (IANS): For the second time this week, Maharashtra's Covid-19 deaths plummeted below the 300-mark though new cases continued to remain in the higher ranges, health officials said here on Saturday.

The state witnessed 278 deaths on Saturday, lower than the peak of 515 recorded on September 15, taking its death toll to 37,758. The previous low of 180 fatalities was registered on September 28.

The state recorded 14,348 new cases on Saturday, nearly 10,000 lower than the peak single-day tally of 24,886 cases recorded on September 11, pushing up the state's overall Covid tally to 14,30,861.

In a relief, the state's recovery rate also shot up for the third day - from 78.91 per cent to 79.03 per cent - while the current mortality rate stood at 2.64 per cent on Saturday.

Against this, 16,835 fully recovered patients returned home, taking up the total number of discharged patients to 11,34,555 till date, much higher than the 258,108 active cases currently present in the state.

As per the figures released on Saturday, there was one death roughly every 5.17 minutes and 598 new cases added every hour to the state's tally.

Of the 278 deaths, Mumbai and Satara reported 46 each, followed by Thane (35), Pune and Nagpur (27 each), Sangli (16), Nashik (14), Latur (11), Raigad (8), Kolhapur and Gondia (7 each), Solapur (6), Palghar (5), Jalgaon and Wardha (4 each), Aurangabad (3), Nandurbar, Jalna, Nanded and Chandrapur (2 each), Ahmednagar, Sindhudug, Beed and Washim (1 each).

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the third day this month, Mumbai recorded 46 fatalities, taking the city's toll to 9,060, while the number of cases shot up by 2,402 to 212,462.

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

The MMR fatalities shot up by 94 - taking up the toll to 16,204 - and with another spike of 4,657 new infectees, the total cases shot up to 495,658.

With another 79 fatalities, Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll increased to 8,167, while the daily case tally zoomed up by 3,198 to 376,626 cases.

Nashik circle has so far recorded 3,769 fatalities and 190,535 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle's 2,981 deaths and 96,908 cases, and Nagpur circle's 2,589 deaths and 113,077 cases.

Latur circle recorded 1,587 deaths and 58,579 cases, Aurangabad circle had 1,358 fatalities and 53,889 cases, followed by Akola circle with 959 deaths and 43,926 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from 21,94,347 to 22,06,933 now, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 29,051 to 28,414 on Saturday.