Kaitlin Sullivan and Reynolds Lewis at NBC:
Drug overdose deaths in the United States surpassed 100,000 in a 12-month period for the first time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday, a troubling milestone amid an already devastating period for the country.Washington Post:
The number of overdose deaths rose 29 percent, from 78,056 from April 2019 to April 2020, to 100,306 in the following 12 months. The data, from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, is considered provisional but is a good indication of what the final numbers will show next month.
“It’s a staggering increase for one year,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the NCHS.
“As we continue to make strides to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic, we cannot overlook this epidemic of loss, which has touched families and communities across the country,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday.
Vermont saw the biggest rise, with a nearly 70 percent increase. Large increases were also observed in West Virginia (62 percent), Kentucky (55 percent), Louisiana (52 percent) and Tennessee (50 percent). Drug overdose deaths went down in just four states: Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey and South Dakota. South Dakota had a nearly 20 percent decrease in overdose deaths, the greatest by far.
