Addressing the Nation on Tuesday evening Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the government is working with speed and sensitivity to meet the increasing demand of oxygen. The Prime Minister said that the Government is working with speed and sensitivity to meet the increasing demand of oxygen in the various parts of the country. Centre, State Governments and private sector are trying that every needy person gets oxygen. Efforts to increase oxygen production and supply are on at various levels. Measures like installing new oxygen plants, providing one lakh new cylinders, diverting oxygen from the industrial use, Oxygen Rail are being undertaken.

During the day he also interacted with vaccine manufacturers from across the country via video conferencing and said that biggest strengths of our vaccine industry are its ‘Samarthya, Sansadhan and SevaBhaav’, and these are what makes them a vaccine leader in the world.

Believing in the ability of our vaccine manufacturers, PM Modi said, the government has now allowed the vaccination programme for every adult starting 1st May. He urged the vaccine manufacturers to continuously scale up the production capacity to vaccinate our people in the shortest possible time. He also appreciated the efforts and studies being conducted by our scientists in development of new vaccines.

He credited them for developing and manufacturing vaccines in record time. Noting the fact that vaccines manufactured here are the cheapest, PM Modi said India the world's largest vaccine programme is underway in India.

The Prime Minister emphasized that along with saving lives, effort is to save the economic activities and ensure minimum adverse impact on the livelihood of the people. By opening vaccination for 18 years and above population, vaccine will be available quickly for the workforce in the cities. The Prime Minister requested the state governments that they should boost the confidence of the workers and convince them to stay wherever they are. This confidence by the states will greatly help the workers and labourers and they will get the vaccine wherever they are and their work will also not suffer.

The Prime Minister, called upon the youth to help in maintaining covid appropriate behaviour in their areas and neighbourhood. This will help in avoiding containment zones, curfews or lockdowns. He also asked children to create an atmosphere where their family members avoid going out unnecessarily.

The Prime Minister said in today’s circumstances, we have to save the country from lockdown. He asked state governments to treat lockdown only as a measure of the last resort. We have to concentrate on micro containment zones and have to try our best to avoid lockdown, the Prime Minister said.

India reported over 2.94 lakh fresh Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, the second highest daily case count ever recorded by any country, even as the day's death toll crossed 2,000 for the first time since the pandemic's outbreak. At 2,94,291, Tuesday’s national case count was nearly three times higher than the peak of 98,795 daily infections recorded during the first wave on September 17