WINNIPEG - A report released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information is shedding light on how expensive treating COVID-19 in Manitoba’s hospitals has been.
In Manitoba, the average hospital stay for COVID-19 treatment was nearly $25,000. In Canada, the average cost was $23,111. This is four and a half times higher than the cost of an average hospital stay for influenza treatment, which is estimated to be $4,959, and around three times the average cost of hospitalization for pneumonia — $8,000 — and heart attack — $7,000.
CIHI says Manitoba’s treatment costs of around $1,500 more per person than the national average is largely due to COVID patients in the province needing to be hospitalized for longer periods of time. While the average hospital stay in Canada was 14.8 days nationwide, the average stay for COVID-19 patients in Manitoba was 16.7 days, almost two days longer and the second longest among all provinces and territories. CIHI says the higher cost is a symptom of how serious COVID-19 illness has been in Manitoba.
The not-for-profit healthcare data tracker says that hospital care for COVID-19 cost nearly $1 billion across Canada from January 2020 through March 2021.
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