More American Indians and Black Americans died from a pandemic surge in fentanyl overdoses than any other group

EPA

Between 2016 and 2021, a period encompassing the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the rates of drug overdose deaths in the US surged by 279 per cent.

Nearly 70,000 people died from fentanyl-linked drug overdoses in 2021 alone, marking a nearly four-fold increase in fentanyl-linked deaths within five years, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.