In Ontario, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the ongoing opioid overdose crisis. There is an urgent need to better understand patterns of healthcare use among people who died of an opioid-related toxicity during the pandemic, particularly amid the pandemic-related disruptions to healthcare services and increasing rates of unintentional deaths due to opioid-related toxicity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ODPRN, the Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario/Ontario Forensic Pathology Service (OCC/OFPS) and Public Health Ontario (PHO) have developed a new report describing patterns of medication and healthcare use among people who died of an opioid-related toxicity in Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic up to the end of December 2020. In addition, this report will focus on describing these same characteristics and patterns of healthcare use among people who were experiencing homelessness in order to inform supportive approaches that can be tailored specifically for this population.
This report follows a report that describes changing circumstances surrounding opioid-related deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as preliminary patterns during the first three months of the pandemic.
Access the full report and associated resources: