Escuche esta historia
--:--
2:22
The United States breaks the record with more than 100,000 deaths from overdoses
About 100,000 Americans died from drug abuse in a single year during the Coronavirus pandemic. This is the most surprising annual number of drug deaths ever recorded in the United States.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that overdose deaths increased 28.5% in the year ending last April.
Specialists accept that the excesses probably expanded in view of the mental cost of the pandemic and the accessibility of more engineered narcotics such as fentanyl.
The excesses spread in all but four of the 50 US states.
Using information from death declarations, the CDC estimates that 100,306 people died of overdose between April 2020 and April 2021, up from 78,056 deaths recorded the previous year.
Katherine Keyes, a teacher of illicit drug use and academic partner of the study of the transmission of the disease at Columbia University, told the BBC that while drug passes have expanded "dramatically" in the course of the last years ago, the pandemic "stoked the fire."
The number of deaths from drugs has exceeded those caused by firearms, traffic accidents and the flu.
The largest expansion of drug overdrive infections occurred in Vermont, where the number of infections increased 70%. Vermont was followed by West Virginia (62%) and Kentucky (55%).
Keyes said that the increase in artificial narcotics, especially fentanyl, is "one of the main variables" in the increase in infections.
Clients of different medications, such as cocaine or methamphetamine, are testing progressively positive for fentanyl, showing that the latter substance is mixing with others.
An american disgrace
Shannon Monnat, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion at Syracuse University, said that overshooting is "a preventable American disgrace."
"In fact, even after the pandemic ends, the excesses are likely to continue to increase," he said. "We really want to attack this emergency from various points."
Potential agreements incorporate fentanyl test strips to recognize fentanyl and managed use locations where clients can be reviewed and associated with healthcare administrations.
