Mumbai, May 16 (TIWN) Maharashtra on Sunday saw Covid-19 new infections drop but the state's deaths kept increasing to cross 81,000, though there was also an increase in the recovery rate, health officials said.

Against 960 deaths on Saturday, the state fatalities were at 974, taking the toll to 81,486 now.     Remaining below the 50,000-level, the cases dropped from 34,848 to 34,389, to take the tally to 3,78,452 now.  The Mumbai situation continued to improve, with the infections remaining below the 3K-level, but increasing to 1,535, taking the city tally to 687,830, while with 60 more deaths, the total fatalities in the country's commercial capital went up to 14,224.