Mumbai, Nov 18 (IANS): Covid-19 deaths in Maharashtra increased even though fresh cases remained below the 3,000-level, as the state's Covid tally crossed the 1.75 million mark, health officials said here on Tuesday.

Dropping below the 100-mark for the third consecutive day, the state witnessed 68 deaths, much less compared to the peak toll of 515 recorded on September 15, taking its overall death toll to 46,102.

Plummeting below the 3,000-mark, the state reported 2,840 fresh cases, or May levels and barely 10 percent compared to the peak single-day tally of 24,886 recorded on September 11. With this, the state's Covid tally crossed the 1.75 million-mark to 17,52,509 cases till date.

The state's recovery rate also improved, from 92.49 percent to 92.64 percent, while the current mortality rate remained stable at 2.63 percent for a week now.

Simultaneously, another lot of 5,123 fully recovered patients returned home, nearly double the number of fresh infections, taking the total number of recoveries to 16,23,503, much higher than the 81,925 active cases currently present in the state.

Of the 68 deaths reported on Tuesday, the lion's share of 14 came from Mumbai, followed by 11 in Pune, 7 in Thane, 6 in Solapur, 4 in Beed, 3 each in Nashik, Sangli, Aurangabad and Jalna, 2 each in Jalgaon, Satara, Kolhapur, Sindhudurg and Chandrapur, and 1 each in Palghar, Latur, Osmanabad and Nagpur.

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the 16th day this month, Mumbai recorded only 14 deaths, plummeting to May levels, as the city's toll climbed to 10,599.

Mumbai's new cases remained below the 1,000-mark for the fourth day and with 541 fresh cases, the total shot up to 270,660.

Of the total 8 circles, the Mumbai circle (MMR, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) recorded 22 new deaths, pushing up the toll to 18,369, and with another spike of 1,008 new infectees, the total cases zoomed to 607,991.

Pune circle (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) reverted to the double-digit level with 19 fatalities, taking its death toll to 10,308, while the daily infections increased by 515 to 439,827.

The number of people sent to home quarantine increased again - from 748,226 to 791,120 now - while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 5,395 to 5,367 on Tuesday.