By Quaid Najmi

Mumbai, Jun 14 (IANS): For the second consecutive day on Sunday, Maharashtra notched a drop in Covid-19 deaths while the recoveries continued to improve, health officials said here.

The state recorded 3,390 new patients to take its total of 107,958, with a recovery rate of 47.02 per cent.

Maharashtra also marked another three-digit toll of 120, down by 32 from the record high of 152 on June 11, and also notched a drop in new cases by 217 from the highest of 3,607 on May 11.

For almost all days in June, the state has been recording three-digit fatalities - 103 deaths on June 2, 122 on June 3, 123 on June 4, 139 on June 5, 120 on June 6, 109 on June 8, 120 on June 9, 149 on June 10, 152 on June 11, 127 on June 12, 113 on June 13 and 120 on Sunday.

This comes to roughly one death every 12 minutes, and a whopping 141 new cases notched every hour in the state on Sunday.

Maharashtra has been recording 100-plus fatalities and over 3,000 cases almost daily for the past 13 days.

With 120 fatalities, the state death toll zoomed to 3,950 while the total number of Coronavirus patients catapulted from Saturday's 104,568 to 107,958 -- both highest in the country.

The Health Department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 53,017 were active cases - increasing by 1,638 from Saturday.

Despite the gloomy data on the perpetually growing number of Covid-19 deaths and cases, the state continues to record an impressive recovery rate, standing now at 47.02 per cent and a mortality rate of 3.65 per cent.

Of the total fatalities on Sunday, Mumbai notched 69 deaths for the second day - taking the city death toll up to 2,182 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here went up by 1,395 cases to touch 58,226 now.

Dharavi - Asia's biggest slum - continued to show improvements with 13 new cases, taking the total to 2,043 cases and and the number of fatalities stable at 77.

Besides Mumbai's 69 deaths, there were nine fatalities in Thane (Thane, Ulhasnagar), 11 in Pune and Jalgaon, seven in Aurangabad, three each in Nashik and Solapur, two each Palghar, Akola and Osmanabad and one in Ratnagiri.

The victims comprised 81 men and 39 women and nearly 67 per cent of them suffered from other serious ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, heart problems and asthma.

On the positive side, a total of 1,632 fully cured patients returned home on Sunday, taking the number of those discharged from 49,346 to 50,978 now.

To strengthen the war against the virus, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Tourism Minister Aditya Thackeray dedicated 12 ambulances to BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation.

A total of 30 ambulances were arranged to mark Aditya Thackeray's 30th birthday on Saturday (June 13) and another 12 donated by corporates like Mahindra & Mahindra, Zee Group and Deepak Fertilisers will join the fleet soon.

A Zee Group spokesperson said it would utilize its CSR budget to provide 200 ambulances including 46 to the BMC, and 50 high flow heated respiratory humidifiers, and the rest to other civic bodies around the country.

The MMR (Thane Division) remains problematic with 80 new Covid-19 deaths, pulling up the toll to 2,730 and the number of positive cases touched 80,500.

Pune Division fatalities zoomed to 639, besides 14,745 patients.

Since June 1, Thane district - with 18,080 cases and 434 fatalities - has overtaken Pune district which has 12,184 patients but 480 deaths.

The next major region of concern is Nashik Division with 275 deaths and 4,316 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad Division with 145 fatalities and 3,261 cases, and finally Akola Division with 71 deaths and 1,720 cases.

Latur Division has 25 deaths and 632 cases, Kolhapur Division 31 deaths and 1,461 patients, and finally Nagpur Division with 14 deaths and 1,242 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home-quarantine increased from to 587,596, while those in institutional quarantine increased to 29,641.

In another relieving news for patients, there are as many as 77,189 beds currently available in 1,535 Covid-19 institutions for quarantine in the state on Sunday.