Overdose-Related Cardiac Arrests Observed by Emergency Medical Services During the US COVID-19 Epidemic

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic took grip of the US 2 decades into an accelerating overdose crisis that caused more than 70 000 deaths in 2019 alone.¹ Front-line health care professionals and officials have sounded the alarm that the social and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic may impede efforts to flatten the overdose curve.¹^,2 However, the state databases tracking overdose mortality often have long lags that stymie timely analysis and response.³ Emergency medical services (EMS) data provide a novel source of near-real-time information to track epidemiological trends during the COVID-19 pandemic.⁴^,5 We leverage a large, national EMS database to characterize emergent trends in overdose mortality fueled by the pandemic.