COPENHAGEN, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic cost the Danish government a staggering 119.8 billion Danish kroner (DKK) (15.8 billion U.S. dollars), with the majority of the funds used for financial compensation, said an analysis released by Statistics Denmark on Monday.
The analysis of the state's public spending during the pandemic, covering a period from the beginning of the first quarter of 2020 to the end of the first quarter of 2022, revealed that 68 percent of the funds, or 81.5 billion DKK (10.7 billion dollars), were spent on financial compensation provided through general or industry-specific compensation schemes.
In addition, a total of 4.6 billion DKK (604.9 million dollars) was spent on a variety of targeted initiatives aimed at specific industries as well as the social sector.
In contrast, direct expenses related to the health emergency, such as the "use of protective equipment, testing and vaccination efforts and treatment," totaled a sizable but smaller 33.7 billion DKK (4.4 billion dollars), according to Statistics Denmark.
Specifically, a total of 17.8 billion DKK (2.3 billion dollars) was spent on "testing effort" while the treatment of COVID-19 patients costs 1.7 billion DKK (223.6 million dollars).
The remaining expenses covered the purchase of protective equipment, which totaled 5.5 billion DKK (724 million dollars), and vaccination efforts, which totaled 6.4 billion DKK (842 million dollars), it said. ■
