The Commissioner for Health in Lagos State, Akin Abayomi, says each COVID-19 test costs the state government between N40,000 and N50,000.
The commissioner, who made the disclosure on Thursday while giving updates on the COVID-19 situation in the state, said about 16,000 people had so far been tested.
“Regarding the testing, we so far have performed 16,000 tests in Lagos, which is much higher than anywhere else in Nigeria, and we’re planning to continue to test up to about a thousand tests a day,” he said.
“So, in the next month or two, we’re going to be ramping up our capacity to test. How much does it cost to test? Well, for now, the government is providing testing free of charge and the government pays about N40,000 to N50,000 per test.
“But to ramp up our testing, we’re going to try and use some means of subsidising those tests, either through insurance or through some contributions from donors or from developmental partners to help us to subsidise the tests.
“For now, the state government is providing COVID-19 testing free of charge and all citizens who need to be tested for COVID-19 because they are not feeling well, or they’ve had a close contact, can get that test free of charge at any of our COVID-19 testing sites in the four laboratories.”
