Overdose deaths have surged during pandemic, CDC says

European nations are scrambling to react to Johnson & Johnson’s delay of the rollout for its COVID-19 vaccine amid reports of rare blood clots.

But the drugmaker decided Tuesday to delay deliveries to Europe after the Food and Drug Administration recommended a pause in the vaccine’s use in the U.S. while the rare clot cases are examined. The decision was the latest blow to the vaccine rollout in Europe, which already expe- rienced a similar clot scare with the vaccine developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and German

firm BioNTech.

The European Medicines Agency, EU’s regulatory agency for pharmaceutical products, has not advised EU members to put the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on hold. It said: “The company ( J&J) is in contact with national author- ities, recommending to store the doses already received until the PRAC (EMA’s safety committee) issues an expe- dited recommendation.”

More than 87,000 Americans died of drug overdoses over the 12-month period that ended in September, according to preliminary federal data, eclipsing the toll from any year since the opioid epi- demic began in the 1990s.

The surge represents an increasingly urgent public health crisis, one that has drawn less attention and fewer resources while the nation has battled the coronavirus pandemic.

Deaths from overdoses started rising again in the months leading up to the coronavirus pandemic — after dropping slightly in 2018 for the first time in decades — and it is hard to gauge just how closely the two phenom- ena are linked. But the pan- demic unquestionably exac- erbated the trend, which grew much worse last spring: The biggest jump in overdose deaths took place in April and May, when fear and stress were rampant, job losses were multiplying and the strictest lockdown measures were in effect.

Many treatment programs closed during that time, at least temporarily, and “drop-in centers” that provide support, clean syringes and naloxone, the lifesaving medication that reverses overdoses, cut back services that in many cases have yet to be fully restored.

T he preliminary data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a 29% rise in overdose deaths from October 2019 through Sep- tember 2020 — the most recent data avai l ab l e — compared with the previous 12-month period. Illic- itly manufactured fentanyl and other synthetic opioids were the primary drivers, although many fatal overdoses have also involved stimulant drugs, particularly methamphetamine.

And unlike in the early years of the opioid epidemic, when deaths were largely among white Americans in rural and suburban areas, the current crisis is affecting Black Americans disproportionately.

Brendan Saloner, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who studies access to addiction treatment, said surveys that he and a colleague, Susan Sherman, conducted of drug users and people in treatment in 11 states during the pandemic found that many had used drugs more often during that time — and used them alone more often, likely because of lockdowns and social distancing. Well over half the participants also said the drugs they used had been cut or mixed more than usual, another red flag.

“The data points corroborate something I believe, which is that people who were already using drugs started using in ways that were higher risk — especially using alone and from a less reliable supply,” Saloner said.