Lethbridge EMS drug responses highest 4th quarter on record

Recently, the Government of Alberta 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 2022. Hospitalization and SCS usage data haven’t been updated beyond June, and deaths haven’t been updated since August.

My last story on EMS responses in Lethbridge had EMS data up to NovemberLethbridge EMS drug responses up 86% since Sept. Since then, Lethbridge EMS responded to an additional 37 opioid-related events, making December 2022 the second highest December of the last 5 years. And by a long shot, too.

Here’s how each November fared during the same period.

2018	21
2019	13
2020	20
2021	22
2022	37

Here it is in graph form:

Last month’s numbers were up significantly from the previous December, which previously held the record for the most EMS drug responses in a single December.

As well, during the first 12 months after the SCS closed down in August 2020, Lethbridge saw 358 opioid-related events that EMS responded to. This is the highest number of such events during the same period over the last 4 years.

Sep 2018–Aug 2019	236
Sep 2019–Aug 2020	269
Sep 2020–Aug 2021	358
Sep 2021–Aug 2022	308

In the 12 months since the SCS was closed due to the UCP government cancelling funding, Lethbridge EMS responded to an average of 29.8 drug responses a month, up from 22.3 during the same 12-month period the previous year. They also increased from 5.1 reponses per week, on average, to 6.9 per week.

During the second year since the SCS was shut down, we saw 308 EMS responses to drug events.

While that’s less than the 358 we saw between September 2020 and August 2021, it’s the second highest number seen during the same period over the last 4 years.

As well, December’s numbers were the fourth highest this year, coming behind only February, January, and November, and continuing the upward trend started in June.

While both January and February of this year were the highest on record, March was the 3rd highest, April was tied for the lowest April on record. May and June were each the second lowest on record, despite June increasing over May, and July was the lowest July on record, despite it having increased over June.

August and September, however, were back at being the second lowest on record, but were tied with another year (2018). October was the second highest on record, as was November. December, which I already pointed out, surpassed every other December on record.

	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
Jan	14	25	10	14	40
Feb	39	17	8	23	41
Mar	19	13	14	43	17
Apr	41	12	15	14	12
May	38	16	20	28	12
Jun	35	20	49	27	21
Jul	35	28	56	52	23
Aug	24	10	42	49	24
Sep	18	16	14	35	21
Oct	28	10	15	32	29
Nov	28	16	38	43	39
Dec	21	13	20	22	37

With December’s numbers in, we can also look at how the final quarter of the year turned out. During the fourth quarter of 2022, Lethbridge EMS responded to a total of 105 drug-related events. That’s the largest number of any fourth quarter over the last 5 years.

Last month’s numbers are down 5.2% from November, which itself was up 34.5% over October, which was up 38.1% over September, an average increase of 22.5% and a total increase of 54.4% since September.

If December sees similar increases, Lethbridge EMS could end up responding to as many as 121 drug events.

This was the highest quarter this year, the highest fourth quarter on record, and the fourth highest quarter overall since at least 2018.

One thing to keep in mind when reading these statistics is that just because EMS are responding to fewer drug events (compared to last year) doesn’t necessarily mean there are fewer 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.