By Quaid Najmi

Mumbai, Oct 9 (IANS): Maharashtra's Covid-19 cases crossed the 15 lakh-mark while deaths continued to spiral and stood just below the 40,000-mark, health officials said here on Friday.

The state has added one lakh plus cases in the past nine days, while half a million cases were added in the last 28 days from September 11.

On Friday, the state witnessed another 302 fatalities, lower than the peak of 515 recorded on September 15, taking the state's death toll to 39,732.

The state recorded another 12,134 new infections on Friday, lesser than the peak single-day tally of 24,886 recorded on September 11, as the state's Covid tally zoomed past the 15 lakh-mark to 15,06,018.

In some relief, the state's recovery rate also went up for the fourth day - from 81.13 per cent to 81.63 per cent - while the current mortality rate remained stable at 2.64 per cent for the sixth day.

Against this, 17,323 fully recovered patients returned home on Friday, taking up the total number of discharges to 12,29,339 till date, much higher than the 236,491 active cases currently present in the state.

As per Friday's figures, there was one death roughly every 4.7 minutes and 506 new cases added every hour to the state's tally.

Of the 302 deaths, Mumbai led the chart with 47 fatalities, followed by Pune (38), Thane (26), Satara (22), Kolhapur (20), Ahmednagar (16), Wardha and Chandrapur (14 each), Nashik, Jalgaon, Sangli and Yavatmal (9 each), Raigad, Solapur and Aurangabad (8 each), Osmanabad (7), Palghar (6), Nagpur (5), Ratnagiri (4), Sindhudurg, Latur, Beed, Nanded and Amravati (3 each), Akola, Bhandara and Gondia (2 each), and Hingoli (1).

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the eighth day this month, Mumbai recorded 47 fatalities, as the city's toll shot up to 9,343, while the number of corona cases zoomed by 2,289 to 225,073.

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

The MMR fatalities shot up by 87, taking up the death toll to 16,760, and with another spike of 4,614 new infectees, the total cases zoomed to 521,070.

With another 68 fatalities, the Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll zoomed to 8,628, while the daily infections increased by 2,559 to 393,387.

Nashik circle has so far recorded 3,935 fatalities and 202,754 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle's 3,175 deaths and 101,468 cases, and Nagpur circle's 2,833 deaths and 121,222 cases.

Latur circle recorded 1,742 deaths and 61,981 cases, Aurangabad circle had 1,450 fatalities and 56,025 cases, followed by Akola circle's 1,055 deaths and 46,360 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from 22,84,204 to 23,00,588, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 25,321 to 24,972 on Friday.