Health Glance
Nearly 71,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, a new record that predates the Covid-19 crisis, which the White House and many experts believe will drive such deaths even higher.
Preliminary numbers released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the trend is driven by fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids, which accounted for 36,500 overdose deaths. Deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine also are rising.
With billions of dollars devoted to ending the opioid epidemic, policymakers had hoped overdose deaths would continue to decline, or at least plateau, after 2018 showed a dip for the first time in three decades.
More coronavirus infections were reported from South Korea to France to Qatar on Saturday after health officials in Washington state, Oregon and California on Friday reported a worrying development: new cases among people who have not traveled recently to countries hit hard by the outbreak or come into contact with anyone known to have the disease, which public health officials refer to as community transmission.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked state and federal officials from moving as many as 50 Americans infected with the coronavirus to a city in southern California for quarantine.
