Mumbai, Jul 1 (IANS): On the first day of a new phase of lockdown till July 31, Maharashtra's Covid-19 cases rose to a new high of 5,537 - up from the previous high of 5,493 on June 28, while there were 198 more deaths with Thane district fatalities shooting above the 1,000 mark, health officials said here on Wednesday.

The number of fatalities were, however, still lower than the highest death figure of 248 notched on June 23. On June 16, the state had reported the highest 1,409 fatalities, but these took into account reconciliation of earlier deaths, which drastically escalated the toll.

With Wednesday's fatalities, the state death toll climbed to 8,053 and total cases zoomed to 180,298 till date, both being the highest in the country.

Wednesday's figures work out to roughly one death recorded every 7 minutes and a staggering 231 new cases notched every hour.

The recovery rate again fell from 52.02 per cent to 51.67 per cent and the mortality rate stood at 4.47 per cent.

For most days in June, the state had recorded three-digit highs of deaths and by the month-end, over 5,000 new patients daily, causing major concerns among the health officials.

The Health Department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 79,075 are active cases.

On the positive side, a total of 2,243 fully cured patients returned home on Wednesday, taking the number of those discharged to 93,154 now.

Of the latest fatalities, Mumbai alone notched 75 deaths - pulling up the city death toll to 4,631, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here shot up by 1,487 cases to touch 79,145.

There were also 64 deaths in Thane, 31 in Pune, 11 in Jalgaon, three each in Palghar, Solapur, and Jalna, two each in Osmanabad and Akola, and one each in Sindhudurg, Latur, Nanded, and Dhule.

The MMR (Thane division) continues to cause concern as deaths and cases continue to pile up, with a total of 5,863 Covid-19 fatalities and a whopping 3,688 new patients pushing up the number of positive cases to 129,088.

Thane fatalities shot past the 1,000 mark to touch 1,019 with 39,316 cases, emerging as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.

Pune district comes third with 23,317 patients and 783 deaths till now. But Pune division ranks second with 28,086 patients and 1,094 fatalities.

The next major region of concern is Nashik division with 544 fatalities and 9,589 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad division with 278 deaths and 6,609 cases, and Akola division with 131 fatalities and 2,784 cases.

Kolhapur division has notched 54 deaths and 2,089 patients, Latur division 48 fatalities and 1,055 cases, and finally Nagpur division recorded 18 deaths and 1,904 cases.

Among the state's eight divisions, only Nagpur recorded zero fatalities on Wednesday, though there were new cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from to 608,660, while those in institutional quarantine decreased from 38,866 to 38,396.