Mumbai, Aug 24 : A day after recording a new high of 14,492 Covid cases, Maharashtra saw its daily tally fall by over 4,000, while Pune district crossed the 1.50 lakh figure, and the death toll remained below the 300-mark for the second straight day, state health officials said on Sunday. With 10,441 new cases, the state total rose to 682,383, and with 258 more fatalities, the death toll stood at 22,253 - both highest in the country. There was one death roughly every 6 minutes and 435 new cases added every hour, with the load of deaths gradually shifting to non-metro areas. The state recovery rate increased from 71.45 per cent to 71.55 per cent, while the mortality rate was 3.26 per cent. A total of 8,157 fully recovered patients returned home, taking the total number of discharged patients to 488,271 till date - considerably higher than the 171,542 active cases in the state. Pune continues to lead the death toll with 67 fatalities, followed by 34 in Mumbai, 23 in Thane and 22 in Nagpur. There were also 13 deaths in Kolhapur, 12 each in Nashik and Ahmednagar, 11 in Sangli, seven each in Satara and Aurangabad, six each in Solapur and Latur, five in Beed, four each in Dhule, Jalgaon, Osmanabad, and Nanded, three each in Palghar and Jalna, two each in Raigad, Ratnagiri, and Yavatmal, and one each in Sindhudurg, Parbhani, Amravati, Bhandara, and Chandrapur. Remaining below the 50-mark for the 10th day with 34 fatalities, Mumbai's toll increased to 7,422 and the number of cases spiked by 991 to 136,353. The MMR (Thane circle) saw fatalities shooting up to 12,219, and with 2,670 new infectees, the total cases rose to 309,008. Pune district saw cases rise to 150,207 with the fatalities increasing to 3,741. Thane district, on the third spot, has 122,626 cases now and the death toll of 3,560 now. With 80 more fatalities, the Pune circle's toll increased to 4,714 and the case tally zoomed up by 3,105 to 176,595. Nashik circle has recorded 1,968 fatalities and 78,464 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle with 912 deaths and 30,692 cases, Aurangabad circle with 811 fatalities and 27,861 case, Latur circle with 600 fatalities and 20,762 cases, Nagpur circle with 552 deaths and 23,959 cases, followed by Akola with 413 fatalities and 14,413 cases. Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine stand at 12,30,982 now, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went down to 34,820. /IANS