ANKARA - Turkey has lowered the COVID-19 vaccine eligibility age to 35, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Wednesday.

"In the past week, we have made our vaccines accessible to people from many professions and age groups," the minister said in a statement after a meeting of Turkey's coronavirus scientific board.

The country widened its vaccination campaign to include those over the age of 45 on June 10.

Turkey on Wednesday reported 6,221 new COVID-19 cases, including 548 symptomatic patients, raising the total number of cases in the country to 5,348,249, according to its health ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 71 to 48,950, while the total recoveries climbed to 5,215,654 after 4,632 more people recovered in the last 24 hours.

The rate of pneumonia in COVID-19 patients stands at 3.4 percent and the number of seriously ill patients is 881 in the country, said the ministry.

A total of 227,163 tests were conducted over the past day, with the overall number of tests in Turkey reaching 57,674,798.

Turkey started mass COVID-19 vaccination on Jan 14 after the authorities approved the emergency use of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine. More than 23,084,000 people have been vaccinated so far.

Turkey reported its first COVID-19 case on March 11, 2020.