While the COVID-19 pandemic has raged on, the opioid epidemic has been surging as well.
A new report by the American Medical Association shows spikes in overdose deaths in every state during the pandemic and a rise in fentanyl being found in combination with other drugs.
"It’s only just in the past year or two that we’ve seen a spike in fentanyl over on the west coast," said Dr. Lewis Nelson, Professor and Chair of the Emergency Medicine Department at Rutgers who joined KCBS Radio’s Holly Quan and Dan Mitchinson Tuesday morning to discuss the epidemic.
"We’ve been distracted a little bit by COVID-19 but the epidemic has been simmering for quite a while," he said.
Concern over the epidemic rose recently after a video from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department was released last week showed an officer appearing to come in contact with Fentanyl during an arrest, and then "nearly die" according to the public safety video.
But according to Nelson, this type of exposure risk shouldn’t be considered an issue.
The exposure is incompatible with poisoning, according to Nelson. The clinical science that the officers who’ve made these types of videos have used has not been consistent with poisoning either, he added.
"My concern is that we’re sending out inappropriate messaging, we’re creating a whole mythology around the risk of exposure," said Nelson. "Which is both bad for the mental health of the officer responders in these situations, but it also puts at risk people who’ve overdosed and need the help of these officers."
There really is no risk to the responders answering these types of emergency calls. "We in the emergency department take care of people who’ve overdosed on a daily basis," said Nelson. The skin-to-skin contact risk is low to zero, he added, and the airborne risk is completely zero.
Fentanyl is rising in popularity because it’s cheaper and easier to make than heroin, said Nelson. The best option to combat an overdose is the drug Naloxone or Narcan, which comes in an easily administrable nasal spray.
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