The BC Coroners Service says illicit overdose deaths in Kamloops and B.C. are below record death rates from a year ago.
Spokesperson Andy Watson says at the end of May there were 18 illicit overdose deaths in Kamloops for this year, which is about three-and-a-half deaths per month. That is slightly below the pace of 2018 when 48 people died of illicit overdoses in Kamloops.
And while yes that is down year over year, we are certainly still higher than the numbers we saw prior to 2016. And so we continue to monitor and take a look at what else can be done with the data we have, in terms of how we can share it with our stakeholders and ultimately look at how we can prevent deaths in similar circumstances,” Watson says.
Coroner’s data shows that there were 462 overdose deaths province-wide between January and May, and the average of 22.5 deaths per 100,000 people is well below the rates of 30.8 and 30.3, respectively, in 2018 and 2017.
“We’re cautiously optimistic about what we’ve seen through the first five months of 2019,” Watson says.
Watson says the majority of fatalities are men, and data from the Coroners Service shows nine in 10 deaths are happening indoors, mostly in private residences but also in social housing or in motels.
Of the 84 overdose deaths last month, Kamloops was the fifth-highest for the number of deaths; the most happened in Vancouver (127), Surrey (57), Victoria (23) and Abbotsford (22).