Mumbai, Jul 9 (IANS): For the first time in 14 days, Maharashtras Covid-19 toll suddenly shot above the 500-mark, though the daily infections remained below the 10,000-mark, health officials said here on Friday.
On June 26, the state's toll stood at 511, after which it hovered below the 500-level. However, the toll zoomed to 738 on Friday, comprising 200 fresh fatalities and 538 old deaths, though much lower than the peak toll of 2,771 recorded on June 13.
With this, the state's death count on account of Covid-19 has reached a whopping 125,034, the worst in the country.
The state has so far reported 61,40,968 Covid cases till date, remaining above France which has recorded a tally of 57,99,107 till now, and figures at No. 4 in the world, below the US, India and Brazil.
The number of fresh cases remained below the 10,000-level at 8,992 on Friday, much less than the peak of 68,631 cases reported on April 18, even as the state remains on high alert for a possible third wave of the pandemic.
In Mumbai, for over six weeks, new infections remained below the 1,000-level at 596 on Friday, pulling up the city's tally to 726,633 till date, after touching the highest daily spike of 11,206 cases on April 4.
With another 13 deaths recorded on Friday, the total fatalities in the country's commercial capital touched 15,599 on Friday.
The state's death rate also worsened from 2.02 per cent to 2.03 percent, while the number of active cases remained below the 2-Lakh level at 112,231.
On the brighter side, as many as 10,458 fully-cured patients returned home, taking the total number of recoveries to 59,00,440 with a recovery rate of 96.08 per cent for the day.
The Mumbai Circle, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts, recorded 1,863 new cases, taking its Covid tally to 16,11,886, while 40 more deaths mounted its death toll to 32,930, in view of reconciliation of data.
Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home isolation increased from 624,511 on Thursday to 627,243 now, while those shunted to institutional quarantine went up from 4,572 a day before to 4,756 on Friday.