An overdose spike in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) has now prompted a warning from police.
At least 11 overdoses were reported on Monday.
Police say the suspected drug appears to be purple in colour and it is believed fentanyl may have been involved.
None of the overdoses were fatal.
At legal injection site Insite, staff attended to 28 overdoses on Monday. Twenty-two of those were on-site and six were off-site (either out-front or in the alley).
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On Saturday, a glitch at a credit union in the DTES which allowed members to access overdrafts, prompted some officials to be concerned there may be a rise in overdoses. However, it is not known if these two incidents are connected.
Concerns about overdoses from fentanyl have been growing this year. In July, first responders in Surrey were called to 36 overdoses in a 48-hour period; one person died from their overdose.
Fentanyl has been linked to 60 per cent of drug-related deaths during the first five months of 2016, according to statistics from the B.C. Coroners Service.
Illicit drug overdoses have killed a total of 371 people in the first half of 2016, with 60 per cent of those showing fentanyl or a combination of fentanyl and other illicit drugs in toxicology reports.
The number of deaths is a 74.2 per cent increase from the same period in 2015, while the proportion of fentanyl-linked deaths have doubled.
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