CLEVELAND, Ohio – The office of the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner issued a public health alert Tuesday after 15 people died of suspected overdoses within four days.
As of Tuesday, the county has recorded 30 overdoses in the first 11 days of the month. By comparison, April had 32 overdoses for the entire month.
“With only just over one-third of the month behind us, overdose deaths are mounting quickly,” said Thomas Gilson, the medical examiner. “Our concern for the public health and welfare compels us to issue these alerts and to provide as much information to the public as soon as possible.”
That put the county on track for more than 700 overdoses by the end of this year. That would make it one of the worst years since 2017, when 727 people died of overdoses.
Of the 15 overdoses from Friday to Tuesday, 11 were from Cleveland and one each from North Royalton, Lakewood, Middleburg Heights and Richmond Heights.
The county had counted nearly a dozen suspected overdoses the previous weekend, according to Gilson’s office.
“It is always alarming every time we see these spikes,” said Beth Zietlow-DeJesus, a spokeswoman for the Cuyahoga County Board of Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services. “These statistics represented people. They’re not just numbers.”
Gilson’s office has conducted forensic testing to confirm which drugs are involved with these cases. The medical examiner’s office will team up with community partners to determine the reasons behind the recent spike in overdose deaths.
“While we are continually on the lookout for new trends in street drugs, such as the carfentanil we saw in 2017, we have learned that the driving force behind overdose deaths in our community, fentanyl, needs no additional help,” Gilson said.
Orman Hall, one of the state’s leading experts on drug addiction in Ohio, said there is a greater frequency of fentanyl being mixed in the drug supply across the state. Many users, however, do not realize what they are ingesting includes fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is much more powerful than heroin.
“We’ll have periods of time in which we have slowed and then we have a jump in the numbers,” said Hall, the senior analyst for the National Emerging Threats Initiative. “It is clear that we haven’t found the answer.”
In December, the medical examiner’s office released a report that detailed the mix of fentanyl with other drugs was the leading cause of opioid deaths in Cuyahoga County last year. That’s when the county saw 668 overdoses, which was an increase from 553 in 2020, according to county records.
“I caution everyone to be on the lookout and take all necessary safeguards to protect their lives.” Gilson warned.
The county offers short-term and long-term intervention. Furthermore, Naloxone and fentanyl test strips will work with most fentanyl analogues. For a list of community walk-in clinics, visit:
https://www.testyourdrugscc.com
https://www.metrohealth.org/office-of-opioid-safety/project-dawn