The BC Coroners Service recorded 147 illicit drug deaths and fentanyl-detected deaths in the province last month, according to a news release on Wednesday.
August’s totals were a 71-per-cent increase from the same period last year, when 86 deaths were recorded.
The numbers mark a 16-per-cent decrease from the more than 170 overdose-related deaths that were recorded in July.
August was also the sixth consecutive month where fatal overdose numbers reached triple digits.
To date, more than 1,000 people in B.C. have died of an overdose in 2020.
The total number of illicit drug deaths in the first eight months of this year have surpassed the total for all of 2019, the coroners service said Wednesday.
There has also been a sharp increase in non-fatal overdoses.
BC Emergency Health Services reported close to 7,500 overdose calls throughout the province this summer — the highest number ever recorded over a three-month stretch.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has said the overdose crisis has been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure of international borders has led to an increasingly toxic drug supply and physical-distancing measures have contributed to a higher frequency of people using drugs alone at home.
Henry issued a public health order last week to give physicians and nurse practitioners the ability to prescribe safer pharmaceutical alternatives in a bid to help save lives.
— With files from Amy Judd and Doyle Potenteau