Leth. EMS drug responses hit record high last month

The Government of Alberta recently updated the data on the Alberta substance use surveillance system, which it uses to communicate information about substance use in the province.

The new data includes EMS responses to opioid-related events up to the end of December 2023. Hospitalization and SCS usage data haven’t been updated beyond September 2023, and deaths haven’t been updated since October.

My last story on EMS in Lethbridge had EMS data up to November. Since then, Lethbridge EMS responded to 29 opioid-related events, which is 45% higher than what we saw the previous month. In fact, it’s the highest number of responses since August, when it 33.

It’s also the highest number of calls for any December since 2018, beating out the previous high, which was set just the year before.

2018	21
2019	13
2020	20
2021	22
2022	28
2023	29

Here it is in graph form:

During the first 12 months after the SCS closed down in August 2020, Lethbridge saw 337 opioid-related events that EMS responded to. This was the highest number of such events during the same period over those first 4 years.

Sep 2018–Aug 2019	236
Sep 2019–Aug 2020	269
Sep 2020–Aug 2021	337
Sep 2021–Aug 2022	322
Sep 2022–Aug 2023	441

In the first 12 months after the SCS was closed due to the UCP government cancelling funding, Lethbridge EMS responded to an average of 28.1 drug responses a month, up from 22.4 during the same 12-month period the previous year. They also increased from 5.2 responses per week, on average, to 6.5 per week.

During the second year after the SCS was shut down, we saw 322 EMS responses to drug events.

While that’s less than the 337 we saw between September 2020 and August 2021, it’s the second highest number seen during the same period over those first 4 years.

Here are the monthly and weekly averages of EMS drug responses, which increased in the most recent 12-month period.

	2018–19	2019–20	2020–21	2021–22	2022–23
Avg/month	19.7	22.4	28.1	26.8	36.8
Avg/week	4.5	5.2	6.5	6.2	8.5

And that makes sense, since we saw the highest number of EMS drug responses between any September through August period since 2018–2019.

Sep 2018–Aug 2019	236
Sep 2019–Aug 2020	269
Sep 2020–Aug 2021	337
Sep 2021–Aug 2022	322
Sep 2022–Aug 2023	441

That’s the first time Lethbridge has passed the 400 mark in this reporting period.

Here’s how December’s numbers compare to all the other months since August of 2020, the last month the SCS was open.

As you can see, the number of drug responses that the Lethbridge EMS were responding to began to decline in the latter half of 2021, but then the trend reversed in the summer of 2022, with increases nearly every month since June of that year, at least until last February.

It’s more obvious when we chart the 3-month moving average over the last 3 years.

It’s pretty obvious that the numbers had been on the rise for nearly a year. That being said, they seemed to have stabilized over the next few months, and even began declining over a 3-month period.

The jump in responses we saw over the last 2 months, which is more than double what we saw in October, may be a sign that the declining trend is over. Or it might be an anomaly. We’ll have to see what the next few months bring.

Remember, as I already pointed out, that we saw a decline a year and a half ago, during the last half of 2021 and the first few months of 2022. And then we started seeing record-breaking highs. The low point of our current moving average cycles was lower than the low point of the previous cycle, so we may need to brace ourselves for another year of record-breaking highs.

Now that we have data for December, we can also report on fourth quarter numbers.

Drug responses in the fourth quarter of 2023 were at their second lowest level of any of the other fourth quarters since 2018. This drop was driven primarily by October’s low numbers, which were the lowest in 2023.

This chart shows all four quarters of 2023, indicating that the final quarter was the lowest of them all, and that they consistently declined between each quarter.

Here’s a look at all the months on record.

	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
Jan	14	25	10	14	40	44
Feb	39	17	8	23	41	49
Mar	19	13	14	43	17	33
Apr	41	12	15	14	12	39
May	38	16	20	28	12	43
Jun	35	20	49	27	21	39
Jul	35	28	56	52	23	44
Aug	24	10	42	49	24	33
Sep	18	16	14	35	21	18
Oct	28	10	15	32	29	12
Nov	28	16	38	43	39	20
Dec	21	13	20	22	28	29

December was the fourth month to fall below 30 last year. In 2022, there were 9 months below 30.

One thing to keep in mind when reading these statistics is that just because EMS are responding to these drug events doesn’t necessarily mean these were the only drug events.

For example, if more people are carrying naloxone on them or more groups outfitted with naloxone (such as SAGE Clan) are patrolling public areas where people are using drugs, they may attend to overdoses and see such success that EMS is never called.

So, the actual number of drug events occuring in the city last month could have been higher.