India will start vaccinating children aged 12 to 14 years from March 16 to expand its COVID-19 vaccination coverage, the Health ministry said today.

The COVID-19 vaccine to be administered would be Corbevax manufactured by Biological Evans, Hyderabad.

The condition of co-morbidity for people aged 60 and above to get a precautionary dose or booster shot has also been removed with immediate effect. Everyone in the age group of 60 and above can now take a booster shot, the health ministry statement said.

The population above 14 years of age is already being administered COVID-19 vaccines under the ongoing inoculation programme.

The health ministry informed that about 180.19 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive.

Meanwhile, India logged 2,503 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours which shows that the number of infections is continuing to decline, official figures show. There were 27 deaths due to coronavirus during the last 24 hours, 15 of which were reported from Kerala.

On Sunday, the country had reported 3,116 new COVID-19 infections and 47 deaths.

The government data informed today that as many as 5,32,232 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the last 24 hours wherein a daily positivity rate of 0.47 per cent was observed.

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