The Significant Impact of Narcan Reversals on Overdose Mortality in Peoria County, IL.

OBJECTIVES: Determine the impact of Narcan administrations in Peoria County, IL on the number of overdose deaths by testing the statistical significance of the association between monthly Narcan reversals and overdose mortality. As well as re-shedding the light on the opioid pandemic post-COVID. METHODS: We collected data on Narcan reversals from hospital emergency departments, Emergency Medical Services (EMS), the County Sheriff's Office, local police departments, and other agencies that distributed and/or administered Narcan in Peoria County from January through December 2018. Data for the 2018 overdose mortality was collected through vital records at the Peoria City/County Health Department. RESULTS: Results from simple linear regression suggest that a significant proportion of the total variation in overdose mortality over 2018 was predicted by the Narcan reversals, F(1, 11) = 5.872, p< 0.05. Multiple R2 indicates that approximately 30.7% of the variation in overdose mortality was predicted by the Narcan reversals. If there were 0 Narcan reversals, there would be 8.362 overdose deaths per month. CONCLUSIONS: Narcan is known to save lives in cases of opioid overdose, and the need for increased administration campaigns is warranted to further battle the opioid epidemic. As this study has proven, Narcan administration has the potential to significantly decrease overdose mortality.

Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 among community members presenting for testing in Peoria, Illinois from 21 April to 15 May 2020.

Expanding easily accessible community SARS-CoV-2 screening is essential in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this report, we describe the findings from the initial 25 days of a SARS-CoV-2 drive-up and walk-up testing initiative was organized in Peoria, Illinois. Eighty-seven out of 4,073 individuals (2.1%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and 46% of these were asymptomatic at the time of testing. There were ten frontline workers without symptoms consistent with COVID-19 who tested positive, including six that did not report any known exposure to SARS-CoV-2. These results stress the importance and effectiveness of widely available community SARS-CoV-2 testing and suggest a possible benefit to screening of asymptomatic individuals at higher risk for infection.