An overdose mapping program, which is used in Kentucky, issued an alert Saturday morning that Whitley County had seen a spike and three overdose incidents, which had occurred within the last 24 hours.
The 8:21 a.m. alert noted that the Whitley County Health Department had requested the notification be sent and that the alert threshold is set at three overdose incidents in a 24-hour time period. A second notification was issued at 7:59 p.m. Saturday saying that the alert had ended.
Whitley County Public Health Director Marcy Rein said that the alert was issued by the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP), which is a data system used in Kentucky that is tied to the data systems that EMS and police use.
“When EMS or police have a call related to a suspected overdose, the systems automatically talk to each other so we can better track what is happening around overdoses in our community,” Rein explained.
The alerts are automatically generated when there are three or more suspected overdoses within a 24-hour period regardless of whether the overdoses are fatal or non-fatal.
Rein said that three non-fatal suspected overdoses happened on Friday, Sept. 13.
There was an incident at 6:40 p.m. in the Corbin area. No Naloxone was administered.
There was a second incident at 7:38 p.m. in the Corbin area where a single dose of Naloxone was administered.
There was a third incident at 7:55 p.m. in the Williamsburg area where a single dose of Naloxone was administered.
Just because the alerts indicate the Corbin or Williamsburg areas doesn’t mean that either necessarily took place in the city limits.
All three incidents were automatically ported into the ODMAP from ambulance run data.
Previous spike alerts regarding three suspected overdoses within a 24-hour period were automatically issued by the system for Whitley County on Aug. 13, 2023, and on Nov. 23, 2023.
Rein noted that the system isn’t perfect and there can be an under representation of overdoses and their severity because sometimes there is a delay or sometimes events don’t get entered right away.
