Mumbai, Oct 28 (IANS): Maharashtra's Covid-19 situation continued to ease with a decline in deaths, improved recoveries and falling fatality rate, health officials said here on Wednesday.

The state witnessed 91 deaths on Wednesday - compared to the peak of 515 reported on September 15 - taking the state's death toll to 43,554.

The state recorded 6,738 new cases - around one-third compared to the peak single-day tally of 24,886 reported on September 11 - taking the state's tally to 16,60,766 cases.

The state's recovery rate increased from 89.39 per cent to 89.53 per cent, while the current mortality rate stood at 2.62 per cent.

Simultaneously, another chunk of 8,430 fully recovered patients returned home - taking up the total number of discharged patients to 14,86,926 - much higher than the 129,746 active cases currently present in the state.

As per Wednesday's figures, there was one death roughly every 16 minutes and 281 new cases added every hour to the state's tally, though 11 districts notched zero fatalities.

Of the 91 deaths declared, one-third were from Mumbai alone at 31, followed by 10 in Nagpur, 7 in Pune, 6 in Nashik, 5 in Thane, 4 in Solapur, 3 each in Kolhapur, Jalna and Wardha, 2 each in Palghar, Ahmednagar, Jalgaon, Sangli and Akola, and 1 each in Raigad, Nandurbar, Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri, Aurangabad, Washim, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli.

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the 26th day this month, Mumbai recorded 31 fatalities, taking the city's overall death toll to 10,196, while the number of corona cases shot up by 1,354 to 254,240.

Of the total 8 circles, Mumbai circle's (MMR, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) MMR fatalities shot up by 39 and the toll increased to 17,835, while another spike of 2,502 new infectees took its tally to 577,078.

With another 11 fatalities, the Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll zoomed to 9,456, while the daily infections increased by 1,306 to 421,903.

Nashik circle has so far recorded 4,204 deaths and 222,299 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle's 3,628 fatalities and 108,354 cases, and Nagpur circle's 3,485 deaths and 146,499 cases.

Among the 8 circles, Latur circle was the only one which recorded zero fatalities though the cases increased to 68,422, Aurangabad circle had 1,551 fatalities and 62,033 cases, followed by Akola circle's 1,231 deaths and 52,053 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine decreased from 25,28,907 to 25,28,544, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 13,237 to 12,988 on Wednesday.