By Quaid Najmi

Mumbai, Jun 15 (IANS): Maharashtra notched a new high of 178 Covid-19 deaths on Monday, sending the state toll zooming past the 4,000 mark, while the second-highest number of cured patients were discharged.

The state also recorded 2,786 new patients, taking the total of 110,744, but a stupendous recovery rate of 50.61 per cent.

This means over half of the patients who are infected are recovering fully and returning home, said an official.

Monday's toll was 24 higher that the previous high of 152 on June 11, while number of cases was 821 less than the highest of 3,607 on May 11 to rest at 2,786.

For most of June, the state has been recording three-digit highs - 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 June 14.

Monday's figures work out to roughly one death every 8 minutes, and a whopping 116 new cases notched every hour.

With the latest fatalities, the state death toll zoomed past 4,000 to touch 4,128 while the total number of Coronavirus patients catapulted to 110,744 -- both highest in the country.

The Health Department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 50,554 were active cases.

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 today at 50.61 per cent and a mortality rate of 3.70 per cent.

Of the latest fatalities, Mumbai notched 68 deaths - taking the city death toll up to 2,250 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here went up by 1,067 cases to touch 59,293 now.

Dharavi - Asia's biggest slum - continued to show improvements with 25 new cases, taking the total to 2,068 cases and and the number of fatalities stable at 77.

Besides Mumbai's 68 deaths, there were a stunning 46 fatalities in Thane (Thane, Mira-Bhayander, Kalyan-Dombivali, Navi Mumbai), 21 in Palghar, 14 in Pune, 13 in Dhule, eight in Raigad, three in Jalgaon, two each in Solapur and Jalna, and one in Ratnagiri.

The victims comprised 122 men - the highest ever, and 56 women, and nearly 69 per cent of them suffered from other serious ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, heart problems and asthma.

On the positive side, a total of 5,071 fully cured patients returned home on Monday, taking the number of those discharged to 56,049 now. This is the second time such a huge number of patients have recovered and discharged after 8,381 were sent home on May 29.

Meanwhile, Mumbai suburban train services resumed limited operations only for government staff engaged in essential services from Monday.

From Tuesday, the number of domestic flights at Mumbai International Airport Ltd. will be doubled from the existing 50 to 100.

Marking a revolution of sorts, most schools "reopened" from June 15 from Monday with students donning their full uniforms to attend digital classes with education imparted online.

The MMR (Thane Division) remains a problem area with the highest-ever 143 new Covid-19 deaths, pulling up the toll to 2,873 and the number of positive cases touching 82,433.

Pune Division's fatalities zoomed to 655, besides 15,060 patients.

Since June 1, Thane district - with 18,732 cases and 480 fatalities - has overtaken Pune district which has 12,419 patients but 494 deaths.

Nashik Division has 291 deaths and 4,534 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad Division with 147 fatalities and 3,390 cases, and finally Akola Division with 71 deaths and 1,745 cases.

Latur Division has 25 deaths and 647 cases, Kolhapur Division 32 deaths and 1,566 patients, and finally Nagpur Division with 14 deaths and 1,280 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 589,158 now, while those in institutional quarantine decreased to 28,084.

There are as many as 80,670 beds currently available in 1,547 institutions for Covid-19 related quarantine in the state on Monday.