The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Overdose spike grips communities
In places like New Haven, where Assistant Police Chief Karl Jacobson says they respond to five overdoses each day, initiatives to combat the opioid epidemic and target the sources are well under way.
But in other areas, like Norwalk, where five people died of overdoses in a recent sixday span, treating the problem is just getting off the ground.
Many Connecticut municipalities are on track to have more accidental overdose deaths in 2019 than 2018
based on data from the first six months of this year.
The state’s Chief Medical Examiner James Gill has predicted the total number of accidental overdose deaths will rise to a record 1,088 after decreasing in 2018. In the first six months of this year, 544 people died of accidental drug overdoses, according to Gill’s data.
A total of 1,017 people died in 2018 of accidental overdoses, down 21 from 2017 when deaths peaked at 1,038. The number of fatal overdoses has nearly tripled since 2012 when 357 people died.
According to Gill, Fairfield is on pace to have a drastic increase in accidental overdose deaths this year. After just one death in all of 2018, there were four during the first six months of this year.
Hartford, which had 62 accidental overdose deaths in 2018, will likely see a sizable increase this year. According to Gill’s data, 45 people died of accidental overdoses in the capital between Jan. 1 and June 30 this year.
New Haven is also trending to have an increase in deaths after 33 people died during this year’s first six months compared to 41 in all of 2018.
The 2019 projections are likely a more accurate reflection of the number of overdose deaths for a city the size of New Haven, Jacobson said.
“We have areas like the New Haven Green where homeless people congregate and a lot of people list their addresses as the homeless shelter,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson said the combined factors of a transient population and service providers who offer Methadone and Suboxone, two drugs that treat opioid addiction, make the city a ripe environment to draw in people from other towns who stay.
“Since they will offer both, people can sell and use the drugs,” he said. “People end up staying here and proclaiming it’s where they live.”
Overall, Jacobson said the city is handling the opioid crisis.
“I think with the challenges we face here, it isn’t so bad,” he added.
In Norwalk, the city has already surpassed last year’s number of overdoses. After nine deaths in 2018, at least 13 people have died of overdoses so far this year.
There were eight overdoses — five fatal — in a span of six days starting on Aug. 28, according to Sgt. Terry Blake, a spokesman for the Norwalk Police Department.
Blake said the incidents are still under investigation and he declined to provide more details.
The deaths will require toxicology results to determine if opioids were involved. Toxicology testing takes about four to six weeks to complete. There was no information on whether the five people who died recently were city residents.
“We’ve definitely seen a spike in opiate overdoses recently,” said Jim Brubaker, EMS clinical coordinator for Norwalk Hospital.
Brubaker said a new initiative, the Connecticut Statewide Opioid Reporting Directive (SWORD), was designed to deal with small cluster outbreaks like the recent one afflicting Norwalk. However, the program hasn’t had much of an effect on the city yet.
“We don’t really know who we are even supposed to contact up at SWORD to try and get that information,” Brubaker said.
In other Connecticut cities like Waterbury, Bridgeport and New Britain, the number of overdose deaths in 2019 are likely to remain about the same as last year.
In Waterbury, which had the state’s highest number of residents die from accidental overdoses with 68 in 2018, recorded 34 deaths in the first six months of this year.
In Bridgeport, there were 30 overdose deaths during the first half of this year compared to 59 in all of 2018.
Increases in overdose deaths are expected in West Haven, which had 13 in 2018 and nine during the first half of this year, and Milford where the six overdose deaths during the first half of this year already matched the total for 2018.
Gill is again attributing the bulk of the deaths to fentanyl, a drug 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin or morphine.
“Fentanyl continues to be the most common drug detected — in over 75 percent of all accidental drug intoxication deaths,” Gill said. “Deaths involving cocaine also continue to increase.”
The number of deaths from fentanyl has increased steadily since 2012 when 14 people had the powerful drug in their system at the time of death, compared to 760 people in 2018. In the first six months of 2019, 423 people had fentanyl in their system when they died, Gill’s data showed.
The number of people who had cocaine in their system at the time of death increased from 105 in 2012 to 195 in the first six months of 2019, Gill’s data concluded. The number of deaths involving cocaine is expected to reach 390 by year’s end.
Those deaths were largely attributed to fentanyl, Gill said, but he is seeing an increase in the number of people who also used cocaine just prior to their deaths.
The number of deaths involving amphetamine or methamphetamine has risen from seven in 2012 to 26 in the first six months of 2019. But it appears to be leveling off, according to Gill’s data. The projections indicated that by the end of the year, 52 people will die of accidental drug overdoses involving stimulants such as amphetamine or methamphetamine, compared to 56 in 2018.