Maharashtra crossed the 1 million-case mark by adding a staggering 24,886 new Covid-19 cases — the highest till date — besides recording the second highest single-day death toll of 442, health officials said here on Friday.

With this spurt of 24,886 cases — zooming past the previous peak of 23,816 cases (September 9) — the state’s Covid-19 tally reached 10,15,681, spiralling up to rub shoulders with Russia, the world’s fourth worst-hit country having 10,51,874 total cases and 18,365 deaths, as per the Worldometer dashboard.

The state also reported 442 more fatalities, the second highest after the peak of 495 deaths reported on September 10, pushing up the state’s death toll to 28,724.

There was one death roughly every 3 minutes and a whopping 1,036 new cases added every hour to the state tally.

The state’s recovery rate dropped from 70.72 per cent to 70.04 per cent, while the current mortality rate stood at 2.83 per cent on Friday.

On a positive note, 14,308 fully recovered patients returned home on Friday, taking the total number of discharges to 715,023, much higher than the 271,566 active cases currently present in the state.

Of the 442 deaths, Pune reported 59 fatalities, followed by 50 in Nagpur, 44 in Mumbai, 30 in Sangli, 29 in Satara, 26 in Thane, 19 in Ahmednagar, 15 in Kolhapur, 11 in Dhule, 10 in Aurangabad, 9 in Raigad, 8 each in Solapur and Amravati, 7 each in Nashik, Jalgaon, Sindhudurg, Parbhani and Beed, 6 each in Jalna and Yavatmal, 5 each in Palghar and Latur, 3 each in Ratnagiri and Osmanabad, 2 each in Nanded and Akola, and 1 each in Nandurbar, Hingoli, Buldhana and Bhandara.

The day witnessed a sharp spike in fatalities from Nagpur, Sangli, Satara, Ahmednagar, Kolhapur and Dhule, even as five districts in the state reported zero deaths.

Restricted in the sub-50 range for the past 32 days, with 44 fatalities, Mumbai’s death toll increased to 8,067 while the number of corona cases shot up by another high of 2,191 to 165,306.

Of the total 8 circles, the Mumbai circle (MMR comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) remained on the edge as deaths spiralled and cases piled up, with the fatalities shooting up by 84 to 13,790 and with another spike of 5,840 new infectees, the total cases shot up to 387,639.

Pune district’s Covid cases touched 223,710 till date with the fatalities increasing from 4,634 a day earlier to 4,693 now.

Thane district on the third spot has witnessed 152,934 cases while the death toll increased to 4,118.

With a high of 86 more fatalities, Pune circle’s (comprising Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) death toll increased to 6,170 while the case tally zoomed up by 6,786 to 272,089.

Nashik circle recorded 2,812 fatalities and 129,360 cases, followed by Kolhapur circle’s 1,788 deaths and 62,331 cases, and Nagpur circle’s 1,381 deaths and 60,754 cases.

Aurangabad circle had 1,072 fatalities and 39,997 cases, Latur circle recorded 1,031 fatalities and 37,519 cases, followed by Akola division with 583 deaths and 24,971 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from 16,30,701 to 16,47,742 now, while the number of those in institutional quarantine went up from 38,220 to 38,487 on Friday.