Mumbai, Oct. Oct 22 (IANS): Maharashtra's Covid-19 deaths and new cases continued to be on decline and as recoveries improved, the number of active cases touched 1.5 lakh, health officials said here on Thursday.

The state witnessed 198 deaths in the past 24 hours -- much less compared to the peak of 515 reported on September 15 -- taking the state's overall death toll to 42,831.

The state recorded 7,539 new cases on Thursday -- the second lowest this week after reporting 5,984 cases on October 19 -- taking Maharashtra's Covid tally to 16,25,197 till date.

In another positive development, the state's recovery rate continued to remain high and jumped from 87.51 per cent to 88.10 per cent, while the current mortality rate remained stable at 2.64 per cent.

Simultaneously, 16,177 fully recovered patients returned home -- taking up the total number of discharged patients to 14,31,856 till date -- much higher than the 150,011 active cases currently present in the state.

As per Thursday's figures, there was one death roughly every 7 minutes and 314 new cases added every hour to the state's tally.

Of the 198 deaths reported on Thursday, Mumbai led the chart 49 fatalities, followed by Nagpur (20), Thane (16), Ahmednagar and Pune (14 each), Solapur (11), Satara (10), Sangli (9), Raigad (7), Kolhapur (6), Palghar and Nashik (5 each), Ratnagiri, Osmanabad and Bhandara (4 each), Washim and Gadchiroli (3 each), Latur, Beed, Yavatmal, Wardha and Chandrapur (2 each), and Nandurbar, Aurangabad and Gondia (1 each).

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the 21st day this month, Mumbai recorded 49 fatalities, taking the city's toll to 9,961, while the number of cases shot up by 1,463 to 247,332, with a case doubling rate of 108 days.

Of the 8 circles in the state, Mumbai circle's (MMR, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) fatalities shot up by 77 as the toll increased to 17,539, while a single-day spike of 2,765 new cases took its Covid tally to 564,021.

With another 35 fatalities, the Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll zoomed to 9,349 and the daily infections increased by 1,441 to 415,558.

Nashik circle has so far reported 4,151 deaths and 217,454 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle's 3,562 fatalities and 106,519 cases, and Nagpur circle's 3,418 deaths and 141,304 cases.

Latur circle recorded 1,953 deaths and 66,800 cases, Aurangabad circle had 1,525 fatalities and 60,750 cases, followed by Akola circle's 1,195 deaths and 50,750 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from 24,47,292 to 24,59,436 now, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went up from 23,312 to 24,621 on Thursday.