I came across two reports this week that delineate the health toll in the United States from two (mostly) unrelated causes: Cars and drug overdoses.
The first involved a Washington Post report on Thursday on how the federal government is setting the stage for a national effort to curb highway deaths. In an interview, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promoted The National Roadway Safety Strategy and its ambitious goal to eliminate all traffic fatalities.
There were 38,680 fatalities involving vehicles on American Roads in 2020, including 6,236 pedestrians. Estimates for the first half of 2021 stood at 20,160 vehicle crash-related deaths, or 18% more than the first six months of 2020.
Next up was a state report that tracks drug overdose deaths in Virginia that was updated earlier this month that again raised the projected death toll in the state for 2021.
The state now expects 2,660 drug-related fatalities for the year, 41 more than were projected in October, according to a revised report from the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office of the Virginia Department of Health. The state sustained 2,309 overdose deaths in 2020, and 1,627 in 2019. Each toll marks a yearly record. In comparison, there were 690 overdose deaths in 2010.
Overall in the United States, 100,306 people died from drug overdoses from April 2020 to April 2021, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. There were 78,056 drug-related deaths from April 2019 to April 2020. Opioid overdose deaths increased about 35 percent from April 2020 to April 2021, from 56,064 to 75,673.
Drug-related deaths are the leading cause of unintentional deaths in Virginia and have topped the list since 2014. The state projects a final tally for 2021 of 1,238 gun-related fatalities and 1,088 deaths in vehicle wrecks, also record tolls. In comparison, there were 823 deaths in wrecks and 868 gun-related fatalities recorded for 2010 in Virginia.
CAPSULES
Health news of the week in brief
- Some good news on Friday: COVID-19 numbers are on a downward trend in Virginia. The seven-day positivity rate has fallen below 30% this week, to 28.3% today. There were 10,741 new cases recorded today in-state, according to the Virginia Department of Health. The state reports 16,127 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Vaccines work: 5.8 million commonwealth residents are fully vaccinated. The state reports that 2.3% of fully vaccinated residents have developed breakthrough cases of COVID-19; 0.060% have required hospitalization and 0.0170% have died.
- Virginia Commonwealth University will confront some issues from its past through its 2022 VCU Common Book project, Chip Jones’ “The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heat Transplant in the Segregated South.” The book explores issues including institutional racism and medical ethics through the story of a pioneering transplant team at the old Medical College of Virginia and the long ignored story of the Black Richmond resident Bruce Tucker, who was taken to the hospital for a head injury and ended up as the heart donor for the procedure. Efforts to locate Tucker’s family before the procedure were lackluster at best, and his name was not publicized until well after the procedure was done. Learn more about the book here. First-year VCU students will read the nonfiction work and the university will stage a series of discussions and events, including a keynote address by Jones on Oct. 12.
