Tobias Sylvester
Lagos State Government on Thursday said it has spent at least N800 million in conducting coronavirus test on 16,000 COVID-19 people in the state so far.
The state’s Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi stated this while briefing newsmen on COVID-19 weekly situation report, held in Press Centre, Alausa Secretariat, Ikeja.
According to Abayomi, the government spent between N40,000 to N50,000 for each of the 16,000 COVID-19 tests conducted so far for residents and others who come into the state with the disease.
“We have so far performed 16,000 COVID-19 tests in Lagos, which is much higher than anywhere else in Nigeria.
“We are planning to test up to about 1,000 people per day very soon in the next month or two we are going to be ramping up our capacity to test.
“For now the government is providing testing free of charge and the government pays about N40,000 to N50,000 per test.
“But as we ramp up our testing we are going to try and use some means of subsidy for the test, either through insurance or through some contributions from donors or from development partners to help us to subsidize the test.
“For now the state government is providing COVID-19 testing free of charge and all citizens who need to be tested for COVID-19 either because they are not feeling well or had a close contact can get it done free of charge at any of our COVID-19 testing sites on the four laboratories,” the commissioner said.
According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Lagos State currently confirmed 3,093 cases of coronavirus that have infected 7,016 persons across the nation.
