Of those who died in 2021, the study found that: "For the most part, the individuals that are lucky enough to make it to the emergency room survive," he said.īut he equates it to a game of roulette - and next time, the person might not be so lucky. If naloxone doesn't work, Erak said, the person can possibly require a breathing machine or a medically induced coma. In particular, he said, people can be admitted to the intensive care unit for constant naloxone infusions. While the pandemic has subsided for now, he says, it left poor mental health and financial hardship in its wake, and he suspects this is fuelling a 'tsunami of overdoses.' (CBC) Marko Erak is an emergency room physician at Humber River Hospital in Toronto. The report also noted that most of these people were found to have a mixture of opioids and stimulants in their system.ĭr. But after the COVID-19 emergency was declared in March 2020, more deaths occurred as a result of at least two substances.
The study focused on the following four substances, which were found to be involved in the majority of the deaths: opioids, alcohol, benzodiazepines and stimulants.īenzodiazepines are a class of sedative drugs that are often prescribed for anxiety or sleep disorders, while stimulants are used to increase alertness and, in this study, include cocaine, methamphetamine and amphetamine.īefore the pandemic, the number of people dying from one or two substances was relatively similar.
It's also five times higher than the number of people who died in traffic accidents in the province that same year, according to the report.Īt the same time, the number of deaths from 2021 was also nearly double the amount in 2018. Data from 2021 shows that 2,886 Ontarians died from consuming a toxic substance - which equates to the deaths of eight people every day.
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