The Ministry of Civil Aviation has extended fare capping in domestic flights till May 31, 2021. The cap on airline capacity at 80 percent would also be maintained till the end of next month, the ministry said in a statement issued on April 26.

The order comes days after the airlines had appealed the government to reduce capacity to 60 percent as bookings had fallen due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The aviation companies had, earlier in April, knocked at the doors of the government for help, as the second wave of COVID-19 began wreaking havoc just when they started recovering from the first blow.

The centre has tweaked a previous order that exempted nine categories of industries from diverting liquid oxygen for medical use. This time, amid the deadly second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the centre said those nine industries are no longer exempted from manufacturing liquid oxygen only for medical use.

"Use of liquid oxygen is not allowed for any non-medical purpose and all manufacturing units may maximise their production of liquid oxygen, and make it available to the government for use for medical purposes only, with immediate effect and until further orders," the Union Home Secretary said in the order.

While the US has restricted export of vaccine ingredients to help its domestic COVID-19  vaccine manufacturers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, an Indian company is supplying a crucial and rare ingredient required for manufacturing their m-RNA technology based COVID-19 vaccines.

Mumbai headquartered pharma and nutraceutical specialty ingredient maker VAV Lifesciences and its subsidiary VAV Lipids, through a deal with a US-based multinational contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), is going to supply highly purified 'synthetic phospholipids' required for vaccine manufacturing. The CDMO is using lipids made by VAV to produce gene-based lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for exclusive use in the COVID-19 vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Ola Electric plans to launch its electric scooter in the Indian market in July this year and is also working on setting up a 'Hypercharger Network' to include one lakh charging points across 400 cities, Press Trust of India reported. The company is yet to disclose details like pricing of the e-scooter. Ola said its scooters will be priced “aggressively" to make them affordable to buyers in India. The company also has plans to export to foreign markets.

The charging network will be capable of charging 50% of the Ola Scooter battery in 18 minutes for a 75 km range. Last year, Ola had announced a ₹2,400 crore investment for setting up its first electric scooter factory in Tamil Nadu that will initially have an annual capacity of 2 million units.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation late on Tuesday amid the surge in Covid-19 cases. While PM Modi applauded frontline workers during the second wave of Covid-19 infections and urged everyone to follow Covid protocols and not leave their home unless really necessary. PM Modi, during his address, also appealed to the state government to impose lockdowns as a last resort, ending speculations about another nationwide lockdown to be announced during his address to the nation on Tuesday. Grofers CEO and Co-Founder Albinder Dhindsa tweeted during the speech that there were over 6 lakh carts created on the online grocery platform waiting to check out if the PM announced a nationwide lockdown.