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 August 2023. Hospitalization and SCS usage data haven’t been updated beyond March 2022, and deaths haven’t been updated since May.
My last story on EMS in Lethbridge had EMS data up to July. Since then, Lethbridge EMS responded to 33 opioid-related events, which is lower than what we saw the previous month. In fact, it’s tied with March for the lowest number of responses this year.
That being said, it’s still the third highest number of calls for any August since 2018.
| 2018 | 24 |
| 2019 | 10 |
| 2020 | 42 |
| 2021 | 49 |
| 2022 | 24 |
| 2023 | 33 |
Here it is in graph form:
Last month’s numbers broke the previous third highest spot of 24, set in 2018 (the same year the supervised consumption site opened) and tied in 2022. However, it was more than three times as high as the record low of 10, set in 2019 and 37.5% higher than last August.
Keep in mind that since the EMS drug response data is weekly, it will contain data for only 4 weeks, which means the last few days may be left out. Since the data for August went up to only the 28th, drug responses for the period of August 29–31 will be included in next month’s data.
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 |
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.
With August’s data finally complete, we can finally compare three full years since the Alberta government effectively shut down the SCS. Here are the monthly and weekly averages of EMS drug responses are on the rise.
| 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.
As well, August’s numbers were tied for the 11th highest the city has seen in any month since August of 2020.
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 last summer, with increases nearly every month since June of last year.
It’s more obvious when we chart the 3-month moving average over the last 3 years.
It’s pretty obvious that the numbers have been on the rise over the last year. That being said, they seem to have stabilized over the last 5 months or, although they are still much higher than they were early last year during the decline
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 | |
| Oct | 28 | 10 | 15 | 32 | 29 | |
| Nov | 28 | 16 | 38 | 43 | 39 | |
| Dec | 21 | 13 | 20 | 22 | 28 |
We haven’t seen a single month below 30 this year yet. In 2022, however, there were 9 months below 30.
August 2023 was also tied with this past March for having the 12th highest number of EMS drug responses in any month since January 2018. It was tied for 11th highest since the SCS was shut down in August 2020.
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.
