Mumbai, Jun 5 (IANS): Covid related daily deaths continued to remain on the higher side in Maharashtra with the toll shooting past the 99,000-mark, even as the number of new cases dropped, health officials said here on Saturday.

Compared to the peak of 1,377 deaths reported on Friday, the state recorded 741 fatalities on Saturday (comprising 300 fresh and 441 previous deaths), taking the state's overall death toll to 99,512, the worst in the country.

The number of fresh cases remained below the 20,000-mark for the sixth day in a row at 13,659, taking the state's overall Covid tally to 58,19,224.

For the fifth consecutive day, new infections in Mumbai remained below the 1,000-mark at 863, taking the city's tally to 709,857 till date, after touching the highest daily spike of 11,206 cases on April 4.

Mumbai's daily deaths increased from 24 a day earlier to 29 on Saturday, as the total fatalities in the country's commercial capital went up to 14,951.

The state presently has a fatality rate of 1.71 per cent, while the number of active cases in Maharashtra stood at 188,027.

On the brighter side, as many as 21,776 fully cured persons returned home on Saturday, taking the state's total number of recoveries to 55,28,834, while its recovery rate further improved to 95.01 per cent.

The Mumbai Circle, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts, reported 2,792 new cases on Saturday, taking its overall tally to 15,46,074, while 37 fatalities mounted its death toll to 28,228.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home isolation decreased from 14,75,476 a day before to 14,00,052 now, while those shunted to institutional quarantine went down from 7,430 on Friday to 7,093 on Saturday.