Lagos Govt Reveals Amount It Spends On COVID-19 Patients Daily

• Govt says it has set up outpatient facilities to monitor progress of discharged patients.

• Testing to further increase in coming weeks.

The Lagos state government on Thursday said between N500,000 and N1 million is spent daily to treat a COVID-19 patient in critical condition.

The commissioner for health in the state, Akin Abayomi, disclosed this at a media briefing.

Abayomi said the cost of managing a patient depends on the severity of the case, such as being mild, moderate or severe.

The commissioner said up to N100,000 can be spent on a patient with mild and moderate symptoms daily.

“To treat mild to moderate case patients in our isolation centre is somewhere in the region of N100,000 per day,” Abayomi said.

“That gives you an idea of the amount of money the government is spending on COVID-19 isolation facilities and COVID-19 care.

Also Read: Lagos COVID-19 Toll Hits 14,009 As Nigeria Records 604 New Cases

“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.”

Abayom said the state has set up an outpatient facility to monitor progress of discharged COVID-19 patients for six to 12 months.

He said the facility would manage post COVID-19 syndrome beginning to reflect in the reinfection of some discharged patients.

“We are beginning to discover from around the world that there is something called post COVID-19 syndrome. Post COVID-19 syndrome, is not well-defined. It is characterised by long term lethargy, weakness or what we have recognised as relapses,” he said.

“You would have cleared the virus, but few weeks later, you start secreting the virus, although not in large quantity but low quantity because the immune system is still trying to eradicate the virus from your system.

“In the process of doing that, people complain of headache, weakness, fatigue and other problems.”

He added that seven accredited private medical laboratories in the state conducted 912 COVID-19 tests in their first week of activation.

He noted that testing has increased to 1,538 tests in the second week of activation of the laboratories, saying the numbers would rise in coming weeks.

According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Lagos, which is the epicentre of the disease in Nigeria, has a total of 13,806 COVID-19 cases out of which 1,993 patients have been discharged.

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