The Untold Story

The emergence of COVID-19 in early 2020 raised fears that already-rising drug overdose deaths could surge even further amid social isolation, economic stress, and disrupted access to treatment facilities and providers.

Prior research showed that overdose deaths immediately spiked to previously unseen levels after the pandemic hit in March 2020 and stayed elevated through the summer. Provisional data (see Data and Methods) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now provide a more comprehensive look at the full overdose toll in 2020.