In sharp contrast to his speech in March last year when a weeks-long national lockdown was announced with 45 minutes notice, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday urged States to only resort to lockdown as an absolute last resort as the country now battles a deadly second wave of COVID-19.

“We have to save ourselves from a lockdown and do our best to avoid it and I request States to pay more attention to effectively managing micro containment zones,” Mr. Modi said in his 20-minute address to the nation. The Prime Minister said the situation today was different from the first time around — there are vaccines, more medical insight into the virus and better infrastructure — and the government’s aim now is to save economic activity as well as saving lives. He alluded to the prevailing oxygen supply crisis and said Indian industry as well as its transport sector was working hard to ensure that it was available as quickly as possible in places needed.

Several States had imposed weekend lockdowns and curfew like conditions while Delhi has imposed a week-long lockdown. Reaching out to migrant workers in his address, some of whom have started moving away from cities in a worrying repeat of last year, the Prime Minister urged state administration to boost the confidence of workers and convince them to stay wherever they are so that they may be given their vaccine shots soon.

The PM’s address came a day after the government said it was opening up the vaccination drive to include all above the age of 18 from May 1. On Tuesday, Bharat Biotech, the maker of Covaxin, said it was expanding its manufacturing capacity to around 700 million doses annually while the US pharma company major Johnson & Johnson said it has submitted an application to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to conduct a bridging clinical study of its single-dose vaccine. Ramping up vaccinations remains the best strategy to fight the virus and the best way of averting economically damaging lockdowns. That marks this story out as our top pick of the day.

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