CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – Two months into the new year, the Horry County Coroner, Robert Edge says the drug overdose deaths are not slowing down this year.
“I thought when Narcan became available to police and fire and EMS, that we’d see these numbers go down, and our numbers are not dropping. They’re holding steady, if not, climbing just a little bit,” Edge said.
According to data from Horry County Fire Rescue, EMTs had 797 interventions with the overdose-reversing drug, Narcan in 2018. The data says 631 patients received the Narcan within that time frame. In 2019, EMTs with HCFR administered Narcan 1,012 times to 772 patients within that time frame.
The coroner says last year there were well over 100 drug overdose deaths in the county. This year, there are around six overdose deaths per month.
Edge says there are a few factors to blame for the recent increase. However, the main issue is Fentanyl.
“You’re maybe used to taking a hit of heroin and you do alright, and then all of a sudden you buy something with fentanyl in it and you do a combination of those drugs and it puts your heart into an arrhythmia and you just don’t come out of it,” Edge said.
Over the years, Edge says his office has seen more people die from overdoses after mixing two drugs together.
He says the recent increase in overdoses has tied up different agencies involved.
“We go to these calls and the police respond and all the other agencies, and whether we do an autopsy or pull a drug screening, it’s time involved, paperwork involved, travel to SLED to get the specimen there, and then we wait months and months and months to get them back and it’s simply because they’re overloaded too,” Edge said.