CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Office of Drug Control Policy has added monthly confirmed overdose deaths and deaths pending investigation to its fatal overdoses dashboard.
The addition shows deaths through the first six months of 2021 with revisions possible as health officials investigate the causes of death.
“This gives agencies on the ground more recent information in order to tailor their programs and respond more effectively to changes in the substance use disorder landscape in their communities,” said Dr. Matthew Christiansen, the office’s director.
While the numbers will not be final, state officials want to provide local agencies with preliminary data so they can better determine how to respond to overdoses.
“We hope to get data out as quickly as possible on this issue and this is one of our efforts to do that, to get the data on the increase in overdose deaths out to community members and to individuals working in communities to respond to these overdoses more promptly,” Christiansen said.
Christiansen said there was a significant increase in overdose deaths in 2020. He contributed the increase to changes in the drug supply from illicit heroin to fentanyl and service interruptions related to the coronavirus pandemic.
“2021 numbers are still pending,” he added. “It does look like things have slowed down a bit, but all those numbers are preliminary and unable to say as it currently stands where we’re going to end at the end of 2021.”
The dashboard has overdose data organized by county and final data from as earlier as 2018.
The dashboard is available at https://dhhr.wv.gov/office-of-drug-control-policy/datadashboard/Pages/default.aspx.