By Quaid Najmi
Mumbai, June 7 (IANS): Maharashtra's Covid-19 fatalities shot past the 3,000 mark with 91 new deaths, while Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) fatalities zoomed above the 2,000 mark, even as 3,007 new cases - the second-highest single-day spike - ere reported across the state on Sunday, health officials said
Sunday's deaths mark a two-digit toll after five consecutive days of deaths in excess of 100.
The previous highs of three-digit tolls were - 103 (June 2), 122 (June 3), 123 (June 4), 139 (June 5) and 120 (June 6).
Sunday's tally comes to roughly one death every 16 minutes, and an average of 125 new cases notched every hour in the state.
Maharashtra has been recording 75-plus fatalities and over 2,000 new patients for the past 13 days, with the single-day highest figure of 3,041 infections notched on May 24.
With the new fatalities, the state death toll has touched 3,060 while the total number of coronavirus patients increased to 85,975.
The Health Department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 43,591 were active cases, increasing by 991 over Saturday's 42,600.
The state, however, has recorded an encouraging recovery rate of 45.72 per cent and a mortality rate of 3.55 per cent.
Of Sunday's fatalities, 61 were recorded in Mumbai alone - taking the city death toll to 1,638 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here shot up by 1,420 cases to touch 48,774 now.
Besides Mumbai's 61 deaths - besides one person from West Bengal - there were nine fatalities in Thane (Ulhasnagar, Mira-Bhayander), eight in Solapur, six in Pune, two in Kolhapur and one each in Palghar, Nashik, Jalna and Akola.
The victims comprised 64 men and 27 women and nearly 74 per cent of them suffered from other serious ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, heart problems and asthma.
On the positive side, a total of 1,924 fully cured patients returned home on Sunday, taking the number of those discharged from 37,390 to 39,314 now.
Tourism Minister Aditya Thackeray and Additional Municipal Commissioner Sanjeev Jaiswal inspected a new 950-bed Covid-19 hospital with 650 ICU beds coming up at the Dahisar Toll Post on Mumbai's north-west border.
The MMR (Thane Division) continued to cause grave concerns with 71 new Covid-19 deaths taking its toll overshoting the 2,000 mark to touch 2,064, while the positive cases rose to 64,714.
Though trailing a distant third after MMR, Pune Division fatalities touched 537, besides 11,678 patients.
Since June 1, Thane district with 13,014 cases and 331 fatalities, has zoomed past Pune district which has 9,705 patients and 406 deaths.
The next major region of concern is Nashik Division with 231 deaths and 3,051 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad Division with 99 fatalities and 2,444 cases, and Akola Division with 61 deaths and 1,328 cases.
Latur Division has reported 15 deaths and 485 cases, Kolhapur Division 22 deaths and 1,264 patients, and finally, Nagpur Division with 12 deaths and 938 cases.
Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 558,463, while those in institutional quarantine went down by 594 to 28,504 now.
In another relieving news for patients, there are as many as 77,654 beds currently available for Covid-19 quarantine in the state.
The state's containment zones increased from 3,603 to 3,654 on Sunday while 18,515 health teams have fanned out around the state to survey a population of around 69.60 lakh till date.