Opioid overdose deaths spiked dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study finds.
Researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, found that opioid deaths in their state jumped 50 percent in the first half of 2020 when compared to the previous year.
From January to June of 2020, which includes the first wave of the pandemic, 11.1 out of every 100,000 residents of the state died of an accidental opioid overdose.
That is a 48 percent increase over the 7.5 out of every 100,000 figure from the first half of 2019.
The pandemic proved to be a step backwards in the U.S.'s battle against the opioid epidemic, with a record high of 93,000 people dying of an overdose in America last year.
Opioid related overdose deaths in Illinois increased by 48% last year (dark blue line), as the nation took a step backwards in the fight against the opioid epidemic
Researchers, who published their findings Friday in JAMA Health Forum, gathered opioid death data from across the state from July 2017 to June 2020.
The three years' worth of data was split into individual six-month period and calculated as a rate per every 100,000 residents.
In total, 6,058 people overdosed and died because of opioids during the three month period, or nine out of every 100,000 residents of the state.
The period with the highest rate of opioid deaths was the early pandemic period, where 1,286 deaths were recorded.
Numbers were already trending upwards before the pandemic, though, with 1,128 deaths - or 9.5 out of every 100,000 people - being attributed to opioid overdoses during the
