30% increase in U.S overdose deaths during the pandemic

Last year recorded the highest number of American death due to drug overdoses as the pandemic made it increasingly difficult to get treatment, whereas dealers mixed more drugs with a powerful synthetic opioid, according to data released on Wednesday and health officials. The tally surged nearly 30, recording the U.S. deaths from overdoses to more than 93,000 in 2020- the highest the number has ever gone.

“During the pandemic, a lot of (drug) programs weren’t able to operate. Street-level outreach was very difficult. People were very isolated,” explained Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a health policy expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Overdoses deaths saw an escalation in the months leading to the COVID-19 outbreak, the latest data has shown an alarming rise during the pandemic. Pandemic restrictions made accessing programs more difficult. These programs were responsible for offering needle exchange, opioid substitution therapy, or safe injection sites where the deployment of overdose antidote Narcan could be done. This lead to many addicts being left alone and succumbing to overdose.

Moreover, the lockdown prevented addicts from attending their support group meetings in person and in-person therapy sessions were also put to an end.

Additionally, the drugs also become more deadly. Suppliers mixed fentanyl with cocaine and methamphetamine more often in an attempt to boost their effects, said Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health.

“The type of drugs that are now available are much more dangerous,” Volkow said.

The chain of deadly events resulted in the deaths of 93,331 deaths due to overdose in the last 12 months ended in December 2020, according to provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

The data released points at opioids contributing to 74.7% of overdose cases, an increase to 69,710 cases in 2020 from the 50,963 in 2019.

“We do know the primary driver of the increase (in deaths) involves synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the health statistics center.