… ‘Severe Cases Could Gulp N1m’
To cover the daily cost of treating any Covid-19 patient, in Lagos, the city’s government spends around N100, 000 naira, The Lagos Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, has revealed.
He said that the state’s government spends that amount on each COVID-19 patient whose case is mild-to-moderate.
He added that a severe case could gulp up to one million naira to maintain on a daily basis.
Abayomi disclosed this on Thursday while briefing the media on COVID-19 update in Alausa.
According to the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, (CEBM), mild and moderate cases of COVID-19 patients are usually defined as those without pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, or Intensive Care Unit admission.
They may, however, have symptoms such as dyspnea [shortness of breath], headache, anosmia [loss of the sense of smell], diarrhoea, sore throat, fatigue, fever and rhinorrhea [runny nose].
According to Abayomi, “To treat mild-to-moderate case patients in our isolation centre is somewhere in the region of N100,000 per day.
“That gives you an idea of the amount of money the government is spending on COVID-19 isolation facilities and COVID-19 care.
“If you require high care or intensive care, that amount can go up to anything from N500,000 to even a million naira per day, depending on the complications of the case.
“Do you need ventilation, dialysis, intravenous antibiotics… Every case is different; so, it is difficult to calculate exactly how much a patient in high care or intensive care would cost.
“We are working on the rate and we would make it available when it’s ready,” he said.
The commissioner also noted that there were 13,543 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Lagos, 2,075 of the cases had been discharged from isolation centres, while 192 deaths have been recorded so far.
