By Shaun Penner

Opioid Crisis

Grande Prairie records 10 more opioid-related deaths between June & July

Oct 8, 2021 | 2:06 PM

New figures from Alberta Health show 10 more people died as a result of an opioid-linked poisoning in Grande Prairie between June and July of this year. These figures bring Grande Prairie’s death toll from opioids in the first seven months of 2021 to 30.

Of those 30 deaths recorded so far this year, 29 are linked to non-pharmaceutical opioids, such as fentanyl and its analogues.

Over the last calendar year, from August 2020 to July 2021, a total of 50 people in the city have died as a result of an opioid-related poisoning.

Those figures for 2021 are just shy of the 33 deaths linked to opioids which were recorded in all of 2020 in Grande Prairie, which is the most recorded in a single year in the city since reporting from Alberta Health began in 2016.

The five deaths in June and five in July from opioid poisonings translated to a ratio of 78.7 per 100,000 person-years, the highest rate in the province for both of those months.

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Province-wide, there were 130 opioid-related deaths in June and 112 in July. Opioids have now been linked to 821 deaths in Alberta during the first seven months of 2021, 791 of which are linked to non-pharmaceutical opioids.

Alberta also recorded a record year for opioid poisoning deaths in 2020, with 1,144 being linked to opioids and a total of 1,316 linked to all drugs.