Severe Opioid Overdoses Rose by Nearly a Third During Pandemic
Opioid overdose-related visits to U.S. emergency departments rose by nearly one-third during the COVID-19 pandemic last year.
That’s the key finding in a new analysis of data from 25 emergency departments in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
“COVID-19, and the disruptions in every part of our social and work lives, made this situation even harder by increasing the risk of opioid misuse and relapse because people were separated from their social support and normal routines,” said senior study author Molly Jeffery, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
The study revealed that opioid overdose-related emergency department visits rose 28.5% last year, compared to 2018 and 2019. The raw numbers in the study were 3,486 in 2020; 3,285 in 2019; and 3,020 in 2018.
The researchers tied opioid overdoses to one in every 313 ER visits last year, compared with one in 400 in the previous two years.
For complete article go to Web MD
Drug deaths in Scotland up for seventh year
Deaths from drug misuse in Scotland have risen for the seventh year in a row, hitting a new high and confirming that the nation has the biggest addiction problem in Europe.
Last year 1,339 people died directly as a result of taking drugs, up by 75 from 2019 and three times the death toll a decade ago.
Opioids remained the most deadly substance last year, but one in three drug deaths involved cocaine, up from one in 20 eight years ago.
For more got to TIMES UK