Maharashtra's academic and cultural capital Pune on Sunday broke ahead of Mumbai to emerge as the country's new "corona capital" with the maximum COVID-19 cases.

Meanwhile, with a total tally of 595,865, Maharashtra has now edged past South Africa which has 583,653 cases (no 5 as per Worldometer), to only rank below Russia, India, Brazil and the US. While Mumbai continues to be at the top in terms of the death toll in India, Pune district now has a staggering 130,606 cases and 3,193 deaths, compared with Mumbai's 128,726 cases and 7,133 fatalities till date.

Pune also has the highest number of active cases, at 41,020, as compared to 17,825 in Mumbai.

For the first time in four days, Maharashtra recorded COVID-19 deaths below the 300-mark besides 11,000 plus new cases, health officials said.

With 288 Covid deaths, the state toll shot above the 20,000 mark to 20,037, while 11,111 fresh cases took the number of infectees to 595,865 till date. Both the toll and the tally are the highest in the country.

There was one death roughly every 5 minutes and a staggering 463 new cases every hour, as per the figures on Sunday.

The state recovery rate increased from 69.82 per cent to 70 per cent, while the mortality rate stood at 3.36 per cent. (IANS)