EDMONTON—Accidental fentanyl-related poisoning increased in the second quarter of 2019, compared to the first quarter by 13.3 per cent, according to the latest government numbers.

The province released the Opioid Response Surveillance Report — a quarterly report that tracks the impact of opioids and opioid-related deaths in the province — on Friday. The report states that 153 people died from an apparent accidental fentanyl-related poisoning between April and June 2019, compared to 135 people in the first three months.

This is the first increase in over a year, as deaths decreased every quarter from July 2018 to March 2019.

Edmonton and Calgary continue to have the highest number of fentanyl-related deaths, the report states. Individual numbers in each zone show an increase as well.

Edmonton and Calgary zones refer to the municipalities itself and surrounding areas.

In Edmonton zone — which includes Fort Saskatchewan, Leduc and Evansburg — during the second quarter 56 people died due to fentanyl overdose compared to 36 during the first few months. Calgary zone — which includes Banff, Claresholm and Didsbury — saw 66 fentanyl-related deaths in the second quarter, compared to 54 during the first few months of 2019.

The report’s most up-to-date numbers show a total of 305 people died from an apparent accidental opioid poisoning so far in 2019 — this means on average two individuals die everyday.

Although the current UCP government has suspended all provincial funding to new supervised consumption sites, the report states that average monthly unique clients to the current sites — that continue to be funded — increased since the beginning of the year.

Supervised consumption sites provide a hygienic place for people to use drugs. Trained staff are available at these sites to reverse overdoses or offer other medical care if necessary.

Any additional funding for more sites is pending a “socioeconomic analysis” on the impact of supervised-consumption sites by the provincial government.

Between April 2019 to June 2019, supervised consumption sites in Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge, and Grande Prairie saw a monthly average of 2,120 unique clients. An increase compared to the monthly average of 1,849 unique clients in the first quarter.

Calgary saw the highest increase in the number of people visiting its site, by 30 per cent. Lethbridge saw a three per cent increase.

Calgary’s increase comes despite an increase in police presence around its consumption site at Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre. Even Calgary’s new Police Chief Mark Neufeld told Star, at a July 2019 interview, that more police presence would have the opposite affect.

“If there’s a lot of police presence around there, you may actually be deterring folks from going and taking advantage of those sites,” Neufeld said on July 14.

The Chumir site also saw an increase in the total number of visits, by 0.4 per cent, compared to the other sites that saw a decrease. Which means that overall in Alberta more people are attending these sites, they are doing it less often.

The number of overdoses staff responded to were also down, from 863 in the first quarter, to 801 in the second.

City of Edmonton has four supervised consumption sites — Boyle Street Community Services, Boyle McCauley Health Centre, George Spady and an in-patient site at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. However, this report does not include data from the in-patient site at the hospital.

Calgary, Grande Prairie and Lethbridge each have one site.

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Lethbridge remains the province’s busiest supervised consumption site with 59,901 total visits, despite its small population of close to 100,000 people. Calgary, a city 10 times bigger than Lethbridge, has total visits of 16,694 in the second quarter.

The surveillance report’s data comes from a number of sources including emergency department visits, emergency medical services, naloxone kit dispensing, supervised consumption services visits, and mortality data associated with opioids and other drugs in Alberta.

The quarterly report also comes with a disclaimer that states that the most recent data may not show the complete picture due to delays in data submission.

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