India on Wednesday started administering doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to young people aged 12 to 14 as public and private schools re-opened.
The government aims to swiftly expand vaccine coverage by also dropping a restriction on booster doses for those older than 60 only if they had a co-morbidity condition.
"Today is an important day in India's efforts to vaccinate our citizens," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter.
The children, estimated by the government to number 50 million, will receive the Corbevax vaccine, made by Biological E, a domestic firm that secured emergency approval for its use in children.
The vaccine would be priced at 800 Indian rupees ($10.51) in the private market but would be sold to the Indian government at a reduced price of 145 Indian rupees ($1.90), Biological E Managing Director Mahima Datla told a news conference on Wednesday.
Datla said the company had provided 50 million doses of Corbevax to the Indian government and another 25 million would be supplied soon.
Wednesday's 2,876 new infections took India's tally of COVID-19 cases to 42,998,938, while the number of active cases dipped to 32,811, the health ministry said. The death toll stood at 516,072.
($1 = 76.1340 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Rupam Jain; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Porter)
