Mumbai, Oct 12 : Maharashtra's Covid-19 deaths nosedived below the 200-mark while new cases suddenly plummeted to sub-10K level, falling to less than half the number of patients discharged, health officials said here on Monday. The state witnessed just 165 fatalities - lower than the peak of 515 deaths reported on September 15, and the previous low of 178 deaths reported on June 15 - pushing up the overall Covid death toll to 40,514. The state recorded another low of 7,089 new infections - much less than the peak single-day tally of 24,886 reported on September 11 - taking the state's overall Covid tally to 15,35,315. In a great relief, the state's recovery rate spiralled up for the sixth day - from 82.86 per cent to 83.49 per cent - while the current mortality rate remained stable at 2.64 per cent for the ninth day. Against this, 15,656 fully recovered people returned home on Monday, taking up the total number of discharges to 12,81,896 till date, much higher than the 212,439 active cases currently persent in the state. As per Monday's figures, there was one death roughly every 8.7 minutes and 295 new cases added every hour to the state's tally. Of the 165 deaths, Mumbai continues to lead the chart with 36 fatalities, followed by Thane (27), Pune (12), Ratnagiri (10), Satara (9), Sangli (8), Palghar, Osmanabad and Gadchiroli (6 each), Solapur, Aurangabad, Beed and Nagpur (5 each), Ahmednagar and Buldhana (3 each), Raigad, Jalna, Latur, Nanded and Amravati (2 each), and Nashik, Jalgaon, Nandurbar, Washim, Bhandara, Gondia and Chandrapur (1 each). Remaining in the sub-50 range for the 10th day this month, Mumbai recorded 36 fatalities, taking the city's death toll to 9,469, while the number of Covid-19 cases went up by 1,620 to 231,066. Of the total 8 circles, Mumbai circle (MMR, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) remains on the brink as deaths spiral and cases pile up. The MMR's fatalities shot up by 71, taking the overall toll to 16,998, while another spike of 3,160 new cases took the city's Covid tally to 532,554. With another 26 fatalities, the Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll zoomed to 8,812, while the daily infections increased by 1,367 to 399,567. Nashik circle has so far recorded 4,015 deaths and 206,700 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle's 3,269 fatalities and 102,931 cases, and Nagpur circle's 2,923 deaths and 124,349 cases. Latur circle has recorded 1,794 deaths and 63,206 cases, Aurangabad circle had 1,464 fatalities and 57,090 cases, followed by Akola circle's 1,081 deaths and 47,110 cases. Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home-quarantine again increased from 23,10,783 to 23,23,791 now, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went up from 24,726 to 25,951 on Monday. /IANS