Lethbridge EMS drug responses set a new January 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 January 2023. Hospitalization and SCS usage data haven’t been updated beyond September, and deaths haven’t been updated since November.

My last story on EMS responses in Lethbridge had EMS data up to December. Since then, Lethbridge EMS responded to an additional 44 opioid-related events, making January 2023 the highest January of the last 6 years.

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

2018	14
2019	25
2020	10
2021	14
2022	40
2023	44

Here it is in graph form:

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

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.

And while we’re still only 5 months into the third year since the Alberta government effectively shut down the SCS, the monthly and weekly averages of EMS drug responses is on the rise.

	2018–19	2019–20	2020–21	2021–22	2022–23
Avg/month	19.7	22.4	28.1	26.8	32.2
Avg/week	4.5	5.2	6.5	6.2	7.7

As well, January’s numbers were the highest the city has seen since August 2021.

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.

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
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	28

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.