U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Zoom By A Record 30% During Pandemic

A record number of Americans died of drug overdoses last year as pandemic lockdowns made getting treatment difficult and dealers laced more drugs with a powerful synthetic opioid, according to data released on Wednesday by health officials, Julie Steenhuysen and Daniel Trotta reported for Reuters.

US deaths from drug overdoses leapt nearly 30% to more than 93,000 in 2020 - the highest ever recorded.

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

While overdose deaths were already increasing in the months preceding the COVID-19 outbreak, the latest data show a stark acceleration during the pandemic. Social distancing reduced access to programs that offer needle exchange, opioid substitution therapy or safe injection sites where observers could deploy the overdose antidote Narcan, leaving many addicts to die alone.

Moreover, during stay-at-home orders, addicts were unable to attend support group meetings in person or visit their therapists for live one-on-one sessions. Pandemic lockdowns and distancing likely contributed to the rise in overdose deaths in less obvious ways, too.

Isolation is known as a factor in anxiety and depression, said Kate Judd, program director at Shoreline Recovery Center in San Diego. The drugs themselves became more deadly as well. Drug suppliers more frequently mixed fentanyl with cocaine and methamphetamine to boost their effects, said Dr. Nora Volkow, 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. Closing national borders did not staunch the flow of fentanyl as hoped. Instead, it accelerated.

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