Preliminary data suggest that opioid overdoses rose in Michigan this year. The University of Michigan tracks fatal overdoses and how many the anti-overdose drug naloxone gets administered.
Jason Goldstick is a statistician and associate professor of emergency medicine at University of Michigan. He warns the data are incomplete, but the trend line is clear, especially for non-fatal overdoses.
Goldstick says many people have hypothesized a relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and more overdoses—but it’s impossible to say for sure.
“It’s kind of hard to tell a causal relationship. But the overdose rates were higher this year than they were at the same time last year, for sure.”
Emergency medical personnel have administered naloxone more than 15-thousand times this year.”
And there have been more than 21-hundred suspected fatal opioid overdoses to date.