Covid-19 could have increased already record death rates among problem drug users in Scotland, researchers have said.
The Scottish Government’s Drug Deaths Taskforce, set up around a year ago, has commissioned Dundee University researchers to work out how the pandemic has affected problem drug users.
Dr Alison Munro said the parallels between the groups in society most likely to die of Covid-19 and problem drug users were “stark.”
She said: “When Covid-19 first arose there was a concern right away that the factors that seemed to impact really negatively on people experiencing Covid-19 seemed to be among those that correlated with the illnesses the drug using population can suffer from.”
Specific groups of people are at elevated risk of dying from Covid-19, including older people, males, those from poorer neighbourhoods and those with specific underlying heart and lung conditions and diabetes.
“Right away there was an obvious need to speak about the parallels between the two groups and because drug users are often either homeless, or have experience of homelessness, then that was another area of concern as well,” Dr Munro said.
Drugs deaths figures have been labelled a public health emergency after a record 1,187 people died in Scotland in 2018.
Dundee was branded the “drugs death capital of Europe” after 66 people lost their lives, with some experts predicting pre-covid that the 2019 figure will be even higher.
Dr Munro said: “We know very little at the moment. There are informal responses, and advice has come down from various organisations providing services to drug users, but in terms of the evidence, there’s very little so far.”
She said that was not surprising. “In some ways drug users tend to get ignored, so there was nothing when I looked right back. “
Dr Munro’s project is one of ten to share £1 million in Scottish Government funding, allocated by the taskforce.
Her research review will look at Covid-19’s affect on people who use drugs, drug-related deaths and the effectiveness of service responses to them.
She will complete her work by the end of February.
