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Firefighters and paramedics with the Anne Arundel County Fire Department in Maryland wear enhanced PPE, during the coronavirus pandemic, as they transport a patient after responding to a call for a cardiac arrest as a result of a drug overdose on May 6, 2020.
When the pandemic hit, visits to hospital emergency departments plummeted by more than 40%. People were scared of catching the coronavirus.
But Kristin Holland, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found patients experiencing drug-related crises needed help so desperately they kept coming.
"All overdoses and opioid overdoses...those were the only two [categories] for which we saw an increase," Holland said.