Mumbai, May 15 (IANS): Although the number of new Covid cases dropped in Maharashtra on Saturday, the states fatalities zoomed past the 80,000-level, with a corresponding rise in the recovery rate, health officials said here.

Compared to 695 deaths on Friday, the state's fatalities shot up by 265 to touch 960 on Saturday, mounting Maharashtra's overall death toll to 80,512, the worst in the country.

The number of fresh cases remained below the 50,000-level at 34,848, taking the state's overall tally to 53,44,063.

The situation in Mumbai continues to improve with fresh infections remaining below the 2,000-level at 1,450, taking the city's Covid tally to 6,86,295 till date, after touching the highest daily spike of 11,206 cases last month (April 4).

Meanwhile, 62 fatalities on Saturday took the country's commercial capital's death toll to 14,164.

After two days, the state's death rate worsened from 1.05 per cent to 1.51 per cent now, though the number of active cases dropped from 519,254 on Friday to 494,032 on Saturday.

On the brighter side, 59,073 fully cured patients returned home, higher than the number of fresh infections, taking the total number of recoveries to 47,67,053, while the recovery rate further improved to 89.02 per cent now.

The Mumbai Circle -- comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts -- recorded a fall in new cases, from 5,138 on Friday to 4,672 now. The new additions took MMR's overall caseload to 14,79,392, while 187 fatalities mounted its death toll to 25,636.

Of the day's 960 fatalities caused by the contagion -- including a few old ones now adjusted -- Nagpur led the chart with 144 deaths, followed by 91 in Solapur, 78 in Thane, 62 in Mumbai, 52 in Pune, 51 in Chandrapur, 42 in Nanded, 35 in Beed, 33 in Ahmednagar, 32 in Jalgaon, 31 each in Palghar and Latur, 30 in Nashik, 28 each in Aurangabad and Ratnagiri, 23 in Amravati, 21 in Sindhudurg, 19 each in Hingoli and Bhandara, 18 in Raigad, 13 in Jalna, 11 each in Satara and Akola, 8 each in Sangli and Gondia, 7 each in Kolhapur, Parbhani and Yavatmal, 6 each in Nandurbar and Wardha, and 5 each in Osmanabad and Washim.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home isolation decreased from 34,82,425 to 34,47,653 now, while those shunted to institutional quarantine went up from 28,312 on Friday to 28,727 on Saturday.