The province is reporting more than 170 overdose deaths in B.C. for a third straight month.

There were 175 suspected fatal overdoses in July, which is just shy of the one-month record of 177 deaths set in June. There were seven suspected fatal overdoses in Kamloops, and 12 across the Thompson-Cariboo region.

In Kamloops, there have now been 32 fatal overdoses in 2020, which has surpassed the total of 26 for all of 2019 with five months of data still to come. There have been 56 deaths so far this year in the Thompson-Cariboo region, fifteen more than the 41 for all of 2019.

Only Kelowna (33), Victoria (84), Surrey (113) and Vancouver (223) have seen more overdose deaths than Kamloops this year.

The number of overdose deaths province-wide has now been more than 100 for five straight months. Prior to that, there were fewer than 100 overdose deaths in 13 out of 14 months, from January 2019 to February 2020.

The BC Coroners Service says the number of non-fatal overdoses is also increasing. While there were 175 fatal overdoses in July, there were more than 2,700 overdose calls altogether to BC Ambulance.

“Paramedics are responding to and reviving overdose patients about 80 times a day, every single day in B.C… It’s a lot. It’s the highest number of daily overdoses BCEHS has ever seen,” Jon Deakin says, paramedic lead with BC Emergency Health Services.

Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe says “the number of people dying in B.C. due to an unsafe drug supply continues to surpass deaths due to homicides, motor vehicle incidents, suicides and COVID-19 combined.”