Brazil to increase COVID-19 hospital beds, supplies

Brazil will assign more private-hospital beds to attend to patients within the public healthcare system who have the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the National Coordination Committee for Confronting the COVID-19 Pandemic said on Wednesday.

The government will also work to remedy the lack of supplies for the intubation of patients by holding an international tender with the help of the Pan American Health Organization, Brazil's Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga said at a press conference following a meeting of committee members.

The committee was created in March to tackle the country's worsening outbreak, the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, said.

"The committee was created the moment we realized the need for an alignment of ideas between the branches" of government, he said.

On Tuesday, Brazil's Senate decided to create an investigative commission to analyze the handling of pandemic public policies at the federal, regional and local levels.

Lawmakers are also looking at a proposal to allow the purchase and application of vaccines by privately-owned companies, which was approved by the House and is now under debate in the Senate, said Pacheco.

Other initiatives to fight the pandemic include the possibility of veterinary vaccine factories switching to producing vaccines for human use, and distributing face masks and sanitizers to vulnerable groups, he added.

Some 13.6 million people in Brazil have tested positive for COVID-19 and 358,425 people have died from the disease.

TV BRICS reports with reference to Xinhua News Agency.