Overdose count 51 in 3 days in NKY, 70 Hamilton County over the weekend
Update
At least 51 overdose cases inundated Northern Kentucky in a 72-hour period, adding to the 70 in Hamilton County over the weekend, for a total of 121.
St. Elizabeth Healthcare hospitals saw the wave of 51 in its emergency departments, said Ashel Kruetzkamp, the nurse manager who tracks overdoses for all of St. Elizabeth's hospitals. The emergency room staff turned around these overdoses with naloxone, the antidote for heroin and opioid overdose.
"We do follow the same trend as Hamilton County," she said.
The Hamilton County Heroin Coalition over the weekend alerted public health workers, treatment staff and police and emergency medical service of the latest surge. Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco, the county coroner, said toxicology will take some time. That means no one knows exactly what was causing the overdoses in the region. Generally, Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky have been experiencing overdoses and deaths from the opioid fentanyl, a powerful analgesic that is often mixed with heroin or sold as-is on the streets.
Since January, suspected overdoses of Hamilton County residents hit 662 hospital emergency departments, regardless of which hospital, according the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition's Tom Synan, who is the Newtown police chief. He said total dispatches this year for unintentional overdose reached 953 by Wednesday, he said.
Original story
Hamilton County hospital emergency departments saw 70 overdoses in a busy weekend, propelling the county's heroin coalition to issue an alert to users, emergency responders and treatment providers.
The Hamilton County Heroin Coalition started noting the surge in overdoses Thursday, issued a warning on Friday and re-emphasized its alert as the overdoses continued Saturday. The weekend's totals were 33 Friday, 22 Saturday and 15 Sunday, said Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan of the heroin coalition.
Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco, Hamilton County coroner, said Monday that two people died of suspected overdoses during the period. She and public health officials urged people to carry naloxone, the heroin and opioid overdose antidote.
Cincinnati Fire Department data posted on the city's Cincy Insights portal shows crews went to 51 incidents related to heroin, according to an Enquirer review of the data for March 17-20. Runs related to heroin were the single largest category during the three days, accounting for 9 percent of all runs. Twenty-eight of the runs resulted in somebody being taken to the hospital. Crews administered naloxone seven times, including five times where the patient wasn't transported.
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It remains unclear what propelled the latest bout of overdoses, but on Feb. 26, less than a month ago, the coalition had noted an abnormally high number of overdoses in the region, with nine deaths. Each time the coalition has issued an alert, officials have found that the highly potent opioid fentanyl, an analog of that drug, or the large-animal opioid carfentanil has been at the root of the overdoses.
The coalition's investigative task force, which looks at deaths and near-deaths from overdose to try to link them to the suppliers of the killer drug, has seen a recent surge in its cases, as well.
"As of this morning, we have investigated 60 cases in 2017," said Sgt. Mike Steers, assistant commander for the investigative force. "Of those 60 cases, 53 have been death investigations."
That compares to 164 cases investigated in all of 2016, with 142 being overdose deaths. But Steers cautioned that it's premature to guess that overdose cases will continue the trend that started this year.
"We are ahead of the curve from last year now, but we'll go through these peaks and valleys," he said.
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The coalition's task force recently gained another participant, the Blue Ash Police Department. Other departments are Hamilton County Sheriff's, Cincinnati Police, Norwood Police, the Ohio Highway Patrol, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, commonly known as the DEA, Steers said. In 2016, Steers said, the force arrested 22 suspected drug traffickers on 80 felony charges in state court and nine defendants in federal court on 39 charges. The idea is to get to suppliers and drug traffickers to hold them accountable for specific overdose deaths and near-deaths.
In Northern Kentucky, St. Elizabeth Healthcare emergency department staff also turned around a higher than usual number of overdoses with the antidote naloxone, said nurse manager Ashel Kruetzkamp, who heads the St. Elizabeth-Edgewood Emergency Department and tallies overdose counts for the five-hospital system. She did not have an immediate count of the cases on Monday.