Halfway through the year, here’s a breakdown of Whatcom County’s overdose numbers

Halfway through the year, opioid overdoses appear to have stopped rising drastically, with the numbers falling in the early months of 2024 and then leveling off recently at 2023 levels.

In addition, overdose deaths have stopped increasing at the 43% annual rate seen in 2023.

But Whatcom County officials aren’t certain if that’s a trend that will hold for the next six months.

“We just don’t know how sustained it might be,” Whatcom County Executive’s Office spokesman Jed Holmes told The Bellingham Herald.

Even so, the raw numbers from the Whatcom County Health and Community Services Department show that there have been 453 suspected opioid overdoses through June, compared to 964 overdoses from all of 2023 and 585 from 2022.

From Jan. 1 through June 28 this year, there were 55 suspected overdose deaths in Whatcom County, according to preliminary data from the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office. That’s compared to the 136 deaths from overdoses of all kinds in 2023, and 91 deaths in 2022.

At least 20 of those deaths this year were caused by fentanyl, a cheap and easily available synthetic opioid, Medical Examiner’s Office reports show.

Another piece of data — ambulance calls for suspected overdoses — were at 746 through June, compared to 1,459 for all of 2023, according to the Whatcom Overdose Prevention website.

That could indicate that overdoses, especially opioid overdoses — which saw sharp increases every year from 2019 through 2023 — have begun to ease.

However, officials at the county Health and Community Services Department said they’re hesitant to make any predictions.

“While we saw improvements in number of overdose deaths in the first four months of the year, both May and June are tracking to be higher and more in line with 2023 overdoses by month,” Health and Community Services spokeswoman Marie Duckworth said. “With first responders, we’re working to understand what may be the drivers of these increases in order to provide information and alerts to partners and healthcare providers.”

Whatcom County officials, acting under an order from County Executive Satpal Sidhu, are treating the opioid epidemic like a pandemic or natural disaster.

“Concurrently and in order to reduce future overdoses, we support initiatives along the full continuum of prevention, intervention, treatment, and aftercare/recovery that are incorporated into our local and state strategies against substance use disorder in our community,” Duckworth said in an email.