Mumbai, Sep 30 : Maharashtra's Covid-19 deaths and cases continued to rise with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) causing huge concerns with rising fatalities, health officials said here on Wednesday. The state witnessed 481 deaths on Wednesday -- lower than the top peak of 515 reported on September 15 -- taking the state's death toll to 36,662. Maharashtra recorded 18,317 new cases on Wednesday, less than the highest single-day spike of 24,886 cases recorded on September 11, pushing up the state's tally to 13,84,446. In a relief, the state's recovery rate also shot up from 78.26 per cent to 78.61 per cent, while the current mortality rate stood at 2.65 per cent on Wednesday. Against this, 19,163 fully recovered people returned home, taking up the total number of discharged patients to 10,88,322 till date, much higher than the 159,033 active cases currently present in the state. As per the figures released on Wednesday, there was one death roughly every 2.9 minutes and 763 new cases added every hour to the state's tally. Of the 481 deaths, Pune led chart with 80 fatalities, followed by Thane (73), Mumbai (46), Palghar (42), Satara (29), Sangli and Nagpur (23 each), Nashik (22), Kolhapur (20), Ratnagiri (13), Ahmednagar (12), Osmanabad (11), Buldhana and Washim (9 each), Raigad, Aurangabad, Parbhani, Latur, Nanded and Akola (8 each), Solapur (5), Beed and Yavatmal (3 each), Sindhudurg and Gondia (2 each), and Jalgaon, Nandurbar, Amravati, Bhandara and Chandrapur (1 each). Continuing in the sub-50 range for the fifth day this month, Mumbai recorded 46 fatalities which took up the city's toll to 8,929, while the number of corona cases shot up by 2,654 to 205,268. Of the total 8 circles, the situation in Mumbai circle (MMR, comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) remains on the brink as deaths spiral and cases pile up. MMR's fatalities on Wednesday shot up by the highest this month, 169, taking up the toll to 15,851 and with a spike of 5,743 new infectees, the total cases shot up to 481,103. With another 114 fatalities, the Pune circle's (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll increased to 7,893 while the daily case tally zoomed up by 4,294 to 366,092. Nashik circle has so far recorded 3,678 fatalities and 183,736 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle's 2,878 deaths and 93,875 cases, and Nagpur circle's 2,436 deaths and 107,891 cases. Latur circle recorded 1,524 deaths and 56,228 cases, Aurangabad circle had 1,327 fatalities and 52,303 cases, followed by Akola circle with 936 deaths and 41,631 cases. Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from 21,35,496 to 21,61,448 now, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down from 29,947 to 29,178 on Wednesday. /IANS