A rise in unintentional overdose visits to some of the region’s hospitals - including Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital (OSMH) - has been alarming enough for health officials to issue an alert.
The Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit has released data showing opioid and other drug-related overdoses have been on the rise in recent weeks.
In a memo to Orillia city councillors Friday, Colleen Simpson, manager of 911 and emergency planning for the County of Simcoe, sounded the alarm bell.
"The Simcoe Muskoka District Health unit has observed an unexpected increase in emergency department visits for supsected drug overdoes at (area) hospitals participating in the acute care enhanced surveillance (ACES) system over the past two weeks," Simpson outlines in her memo.
"While there are slight elevations in a number of hospitals the one hospital with a significant elevation is (OSMH), at approximately double their baseline," she reported.
She said the hospital is aware of this and "have confirmed the elevation."
She said ACES data has not identified any specifice type of drug that is driving this increase, "as the vast majority of these visits" is from an unspecific overdose.
Dr. Lisa Simon, the health unit's associate medical officer of health, confirms the data deals with unintentional overdoses.
The data includes all patients 10 years of age and older visiting participating Simcoe Muskoka hospitals. The participating hospitals are the Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare (Bracebridge and Huntsville locations), Georgian Bay General Hospital in Midland, OSMH, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre, and Collingwood General and Marine Hospital.
During the week of Nov. 3, 2019, the number of visits for unintentional overdoes was 20 and even dipped to 16 on the week of Dec. 8. However, for the week of Feb. 2 of this year, it spiked to 35 and the week after was slightly lower at 31.
Simon says an alert has been issued every week since Jan. 26, 2020 with hopes that agencies will be monitoring the situation closely.
“We’re at what we call a yellow phase, which is where we don’t need to alarm the public with a statement, but we are sending an alert to those centres who would deal directly with at-risk people,” she said.
“The main takeaway here is there is a problem," Simon added. "We are monitoring it the best we can.”
Over a seven-week average, there have been 22.3 visits weekly that dealt with the unintentional overdoses.
The data includes any mention of opioid and other drug overdoses from methadone, fentanyl, codeine, morphine, hydromorphone, hydromorph, carfentanil, dilaudid, heroin, oxycodone, opium, percocet and opioids. It also includes mentions of non-drug specific overdose, excluding alcohol-related or other specific non-opioid drug mentions.
Tonight, a group of local mothers whose children have died as a result of the ongoing opioid crisis, is hosting an event called Orillia Talks: Simcoe County Moms Raising Awareness. It will take place at the Geneva Event Centre, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
The free event will give people the opportunity hear first-hand accounts and learn about the issue.
--With files from Dave Dawson
