Mumbai, Oct 16 (IANS): After a brief lull, Maharashtra's Covid deaths again began to increase and cases were again in the higher ranges, health officials said on Friday.

The state witnessed 306 deaths on Friday, taking its toll to 41,502, while there were 11,447 new cases, which took the tally to 15,76,062.

In a great relief, the state recovery remained high, but after 7 days, dropped marginally - from 85.04 per cent to 85.03 per cent - while the mortality rate remained at 2.63 per cent for the fourth day.

Against this, 13,885 fully-recovered patients returned home - taking up the total number to 13,44,368 till date, against the 189,715 active cases in the state.

As per Friday's figures, there was one death roughly every 4.7 minutes and 477 new cases added every hour to the state tally.

Of the fresh deaths, Pune led with 73, while 37 died in Mumbai, 22 in Solapur, 19 in Thane, 15 each in Sangli and Nagpur, 14 in Ratnagiri, 12 in Kolhapur and 10 in Wardha.

There were also eight deaths each in Raigad and Nashik, seven each in Satara and Washim, six each in Palghar, Osmanabad, and Nanded, five each in Jalgaon and Bhandara, four each in Ahmednagar, Latur, and Buldhana, three each in Aurangabad, Beed, and Amravati, two each in Akola and Yavatmal, and one each in Nandurbar, Sindhudurg, Jalna, Hingoli, and Chandrapur, besides one person from outside.

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the 15th day this month, Mumbai's 37 fatalities took its toll to 9,638 while the number of cases shot up by 1,823 to 238,544.

Mumbai circle (MMR) saw 70 deaths, taking the toll to 17,288 while with 3,630 new infectees, the cases zoomed up to 546,839.

With another 102 fatalities, the Pune circle's death toll rose to 9,088 and with 1,527 new cases, the tally went up to 406,822.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 23,33,522, while the the number of those in institutional quarantine went up to 23,409.