Trends in non-fatal and fatal opioid overdoses during the first two years of the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic.

PURPOSE: This study assessed opioid-involved overdose rates by age, sex, and race-ethnicity across strict pandemic mitigation phases and how this varied across data systems.

METHODS: We examined opioid-involved overdoses using medical examiner and hospital data for Cook County, Illinois between 2016-2021. Multivariable segmented regression was used to assess weekly overdose rates across subgroups of age, sex and race/ethnicity and strict pandemic mitigation phases.

RESULTS: The overall rate of weekly opioid-involved overdoses increased when assessing the medical examiner (β = 0.01; 95% CI = 0.01,0.02; P ≤ .001) and emergency department visits data sources (β = 0.15; 95% CI = 0.09,0.20; P ≤ .001) but not for the hospital admissions data source. We found differences in overdose rates across subgroups and phases of pandemic mandates. Fatal overdoses increased during lockdown-1 while admissions and emergency department (ED) visits for opioid-involved overdoses generally decreased across all phases of pandemic mitigation mandates except for the period following lockdown-1. Across pandemic mitigation phases, Hispanics and individuals under 25 years did not demonstrate any change in admissions and ED visits for overdoses.

CONCLUSIONS: We underscore the importance of utilizing multiple sources of surveillance to better characterize opioid-involved overdoses and for public health planning.