GENEVA/BRASILIA: Brazil's COVID-19 death toll is on track to overtake Britain on Friday to become the second highest in the world with over 40,000 dead, but the World Health Organization said the nation's health system was standing up to the pressure.

"The system as such from the data we see is not overwhelmed," the WHO's top emergencies expert Dr Mike Ryan said, with few areas of Brazil using more than 80 per cent of their hospitals' intensive care bed capacity.