Opioid deaths have dropped to near pre-pandemic levels in recent months, health unit officials say, but police are concerned a fatal strain of opioids may be making its way through the area.
This weekend, the OPP warned of the potentially fatal strain of opioids after two females died of suspected opioid overdose in Tay Township on Jan. 3, followed by two males who met the same fate in Gravenhurst three days later.
Orillia OPP Const. Derek Tilley said work is under way to determine the makeup of the opioids that led to the recent deaths.
Since the deaths occurred across multiple OPP detachments, Tilley said police do not yet have any information as to whether the deaths were linked to a particular opioid strain, but he said the OPP has suspicions of a “deadly strain” in the area.
“We do have suspicions that there is a deadly strain out there, or a more potent strain, we just don't know what's in it,” said Tilley. “There's a toxicology report that's done at the Centre of Forensic Science … (but) we don't have access to any of those findings yet. That's a process that takes time.”
Regional opioid deaths have dropped to levels not seen since January 2020, health unit officials say, but the number of deaths is still substantially higher than in years past.
“I would say that both in Simcoe Muskoka, and Canada as a whole, the rate of opioid related deaths are declining somewhat … from the extreme height that we saw in 2021, but the rates still do remain far elevated compared to levels before the pandemic,” said Dr. Lisa Simon, the associate medical officer of health with the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit.
“On the one hand, that's good news, but there isn't an indication that things are necessarily going to trend back to where they were even prior to the pandemic," Simon told OrilliaMatters.
“The rate stayed quite high from 2017 to 2019, and then worsened further during the pandemic,” she said. “We're only now … in 2023, starting to see a small bit of a dip back to the levels even in 2020, but we're still far, far elevated.”
According to preliminary health unit data, there were 66 confirmed or probable opioid deaths in the region through the first half of 2022 – a 31 per cent drop from the first half of 2021.
With that said, there were 352 opioid-related deaths in Simcoe Muskoka in the first 28 months of the pandemic, a total 75 per cent higher than in the 25 months preceding the pandemic.
“This is part of a trend we've been seeing since 2017, which is when fentanyl was introduced into the street drug supply, and it was at that time that we saw a huge escalation in the number of opioid related deaths in Simcoe Muskoka, in Ontario, and in Canada as a whole,” Simon said.
On top of fentanyl, Simon said heightened social and economic stresses have led to inflated opioid death rates over the last few years.
“The COVID pandemic worsened the situation significantly, probably for a number of reasons, including that the drug supply itself seemed to get increasingly toxic,” she said.
“There was more stressors of a variety of kinds, which might change people's use of drugs. There was more likelihood of using alone, and there was a change in access to services," said Simon.
“All of those things combined with economic hardships and everything else that's going on, has created a situation that has been more concerning.”
Simon said she has heard of two new opioid strains found in Toronto over the holidays, but could not confirm whether they were related to the four recent opioid deaths in our region.
“The one source of information that we do have is through the Toronto Drug Checking Service, and we understand through them that for the period of Dec. 17-30 they did identify two new fentanyl related drugs, so it is possible that's also what's being used in the area,” she said. “But unless there's a coroner's investigation, I wouldn't know the details.”
As the opioid crisis persists, Simon said the health unit is working in multiple ways to help.
“(We’re) making naloxone available to community partners and to individuals. We provide safer drug use supplies, such as needle exchanges, and we have actively supported the application for a supervised consumption site in Barrie, where there is the highest number of individuals who may be interested in using such a service,” she said.
The health unit also tries to support preventative work by assessing the underlying causes of addiction, she said.
“We also are very interested in prevention,” she said. “We look at early childhood and the school-aged years as very important times for mental health promotion, as one part of the prevention work, and we're also very aware of the other determinants of health that contributed to substance use and that includes things like the experience of poverty and racism and the lack of affordable and supportive housing.”
For individuals looking to help, Simon said naloxone kits, which can temporarily reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, are freely available to all at numerous pharmacies.
“Naloxone is very readily available for anyone who is using opioids, whether it's prescribed or street drugs, or anybody who spends time with someone who uses opioids. It can be accessed through many pharmacies, and it's free and you don't need a health card,” she said.
“It can also be accessed from the health unit office, and there are a number of other community organizations that make it available as well.”
