There has been rising disquiet and disbelief over the claim by Lagos State Government that severe COVID-19 patients receive daily medical treatment at the cost of N1 million. Several stakeholders have been questioning the validity or the proof of the N1 million daily expenditure on each severe case COVID-19 patient in a state with the highest figure of coronavirus victims in thousands.

The Commissioner for Health in Lagos State, Prof Akin Abayomi, on Thursday said that the state government spends about N500,000 to N1 million daily to treat each COVID-19 patient who is having severe case. The commissioner added that the government spends on the average about N100,000 daily to treat a mild patient and more on patients with critical conditions.

The commissioner had declared at a press briefing: “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.”

There have been questions about the drugs the government is administering on the patients at this period that global experts have not confirmed any standard medication for the treatment of the virus across the world. However, since there are records of recoveries, the questions have been about what it costs to acquire the medical facilitates that have been the positive tested victims test negative to coronavirus after spending a period at the isolation centre.

The reservation expressed by stakeholders was further reflected in a questionable claim by the Minister of information, Lai Mohammed, that the federal government spends about N3.5 million to feed the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, in one month.

Invariably, the lingering disbeliefs often spring from imprecision of government statements that sound ambiguous from time to time.