As supplies run low, a Brazilian town says it could be forced to take patients off ventilators

Both public and private hospitals are hard-hit. Brazil's National Association of Private Hospitals (ANAHP) has predicted that private hospitals will run out of medicines necessary for intubating Covid-19 patients by Monday, blaming the shortage on a health ministry order that pharmaceuticals companies prioritize supplying public hospitals.

Coronavirus cases are surging in Brazil, and the country's health systems are increasingly overwhelmed. In nearly every state across Brazil, occupancy rates in intensive care units (ICUs) are at or above 80%. Some of them are at or above 90%, and a few have have exceeded 100% occupancy, forcing them to turn some patients away. State governors, city mayors and local medical personnel now say they are running out of supplies to treat even the Covid-19 patients who have been allocated precious ICU beds. Stocks of medicines that facilitate intubation could vanish in the next two weeks, according to a report from the National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries. And Brazil's National Association of Private Hospitals (ANAHP) has predicted that private hospitals will run out of medicines necessary for intubating Covid-19 patients by Monday.