The Injury and Violence Prevention Branch of the Division of Public Health recently posted an update of suspected overdose deaths and provisional data on ED visits for opioid-related overdose and unintentional med/drug with potential for abuse and overdose for April 2022.

Note there continue to be known data quality issues for May and June 2021 ED visits that are impacting the shown trends, interpret the data for these months with caution.

This month, researchers are introducing a new monthly report from the N Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (NC OCME) on fentanyl-positive deaths using NC OCME Toxicology data. This provisional report includes a snapshot of the most recent month’s data on deaths that tested positive for fentanyl at time of death, as well as year-to-date and rolling 24-month data on fentanyl-positive deaths.

Fentanyl-Positive Deaths

There were 3,163 fentanyl-positive deaths in 2021 compared to 2,426 in 2020. This is a 30% increase in fentanyl-positive deaths from 2020-2021.

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Suspected Overdose Deaths

There were 351 suspected overdose deaths this April compared to 348 this time last year (April 2021).

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Overdose Involving Medication or Drugs with Dependency Potential

There were 1,232 overdose ED visits this April involving medication or drugs with dependency potential compared to 1,409 this time last year (April 2021).

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