People buy vegetables during the lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak in the outskirts of Agartala, India's northeast state of Tripura, March 30, 2020. (Str/Xinhua)

With 32 deaths and 1,251 positive cases, India continues to fight COVID-19 and also striving to put together enough medical supplies to meet the unexpected situation in the coming days.

Clearly lacking in basic medical supplies like Ventilators, Personal Protection Equipment (PPEs), Face Masks, Testing Kits, etc., the Indian government has decided to allow its business community to produce such medical supplies, and even approached overseas suppliers to meet the urgent requirements.

According to an official statement issued by the country's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday, purchase orders had been placed with international companies like Hamilton, Mindray and Draeger to supply ventilators, even as the country's Ministry of External Affairs approached suppliers in other countries, including China, for sourcing more ventilators.

For procuring PPE kits, firms in Singapore and South Korea had been identified and purchase orders placed with them, said the Ministry's statement.

Face masks of "N95" category are being manufactured by two domestic producers having the capacity of supplying 50,000 masks per day, but had ramped up capacities to make 100,000 masks per day within the next week, according to the statement.

Hospitals in the country had around 1.2 million N-95 face masks in stock as of now. Additional half a million face masks were distributed in the past two days and 140,000 face masks were being distributed on Tuesday.

About 1 million face masks would be part of the PPE kits being sourced from Singapore, said the Ministry's statement.