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 June 2024. Hospitalization and SCS usage data haven’t been updated beyond March 2023, and deaths haven’t been updated since April.
My last story on EMS in Lethbridge had EMS data up to March. Since then, Lethbridge EMS responded to 49 opioid-related events, which is the third lowest second quarter ever recorded. In April alone, we saw 22 of those responses, however, the third highest of any April on record.
| 2018 | 41 |
| 2019 | 12 |
| 2020 | 15 |
| 2021 | 14 |
| 2022 | 12 |
| 2023 | 39 |
| 2024 | 25 |
Here it is in graph form:
Even though April 2024 was significantly lower than last year, it was still more than twice as high as April 2022. In fact, out of the last 6 Aprils, last April was the only one that was higher than this year’s.
That being said, the next two months in the second quarter dropped substantially, giving us the lowest May and June on record.
| May | June | |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 38 | 35 |
| 2019 | 16 | 20 |
| 2020 | 20 | 49 |
| 2021 | 28 | 27 |
| 2022 | 12 | 21 |
| 2023 | 43 | 39 |
| 2024 | 11 | 13 |
Here’s a look at all the second quarters since 2018:
| 2018 | 114 |
| 2019 | 48 |
| 2020 | 84 |
| 2021 | 69 |
| 2022 | 45 |
| 2023 | 121 |
| 2024 | 49 |
And in graph form:
Even though the second quarter of 2024 is the second lowest on record and we saw a drop in drug responses in May and June over April, the second quarter was still higher than the first quarter: 49 compared to 37. That’s a 32% increase.
So, I wouldn’t get too comfortable just yet.
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 the second quarter’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.
Since February 2023, despite a couple of brief bumps, the number of monthly drug responses has declined.
It’s more obvious when we chart the 3-month moving average over the last 4 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.
Then we saw a jump in responses we saw over the last 2 months of 2023, which was more than double what we saw in October.
But January brought in a huge drop in number, at only 3 total drug responses in the entire city. That’s the first time since February 2020 and only the second time since January 2018 that the numbers of drug responses have been in the single digits.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up just yet, however, as the numbers started climbing again over the following 3 months. Even when they dropped in May and June, they were still much higher than January’s numbers. They’re still lower than they were in December, but April’s numbers were the second highest we’ve seen since last summer.
This shows that January’s numbers were probably just an anomaly. That being said, it’s pretty clear that the first half of 2024 has been consistently lower than where they were in the first half of 2023.
Finally, here’s a look at all the months on record.
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 14 | 25 | 10 | 14 | 40 | 44 | 3 |
| Feb | 39 | 17 | 8 | 23 | 41 | 49 | 12 |
| Mar | 19 | 13 | 14 | 43 | 17 | 33 | 22 |
| Apr | 41 | 12 | 15 | 14 | 12 | 39 | 25 |
| May | 38 | 16 | 20 | 28 | 12 | 43 | 11 |
| Jun | 35 | 20 | 49 | 27 | 21 | 39 | 13 |
| 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 |
This marks 10 months in a row to fall below 30. In 2022, there were 9 months below 30. We’ll see if these numbers hold up for the third quarter; although, despite having only two weeks’ worth of data for July, we’re already higher (14) than all of June (13), so this dip in May and June might be shortlived.
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 occurring in the city last quarter could have been higher.
