In 2019, there were 70,630 deaths, and compared with that year's rate, deaths in 2020 increased by almost 30%.
"It's a major increase from an all-time high to a new all-time high," said Sharfstein.So the impact overall is devastating."
Sharfstein also cited the Covid-19 pandemic as a reason for overdose deaths spiking in 2020.Sharfstein says these risk factors may push someone to use drugs.
Track the epidemic in real timeThe statistics are grim, but there are measures that can be taken to mitigate the damage.Sharfstein is calling for another comparison to Covid-19, but in this case, a comparison of the urgency and inventiveness of response efforts.He stressed that tracking the problem is an important step in addressing it, and noted that while data collection efforts were robust with "maps every day, we knew how many new cases, who got the new cases, who's getting tested, who's getting vaccinated," data collection for overdoses hasn't been as urgent."Here we are in July, and we're just getting the data for 2020," he said."We can do a lot better with data and use that data, just like we did with Covid, to focus our energy on the populations, the groups and the areas that need the most attention."
Medical treatment strategies that rose to prominence over the course of the pandemic may also be used to address the overdose crisis.