Statewide Emergency To Be Declared In PA For Opioid Epidemic

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is expected to declare a disaster emergency on Wednesday for the ongoing opioid epidemic affecting thousands of residents.

Multiple sources report the governor, for the first time in Pennsylvania history, will issue a disaster emergency for a public health crisis. The announcement is expected at a 2 p.m. press conference. The action will be in the form of an executive order that will allow state officials to temporarily override regulations preventing them from fighting the opioid crisis, PennLive reports.

The news comes weeks after alarming data was released by the Centers for Disease Control that shows the state's drug overdose death rate in 2016 was among the very worst in the country. Provisional data for drug overdose deaths in 2017 only shows the numbers spiking.

The 2016 figures, released in late December, show 4,627 Pennsylvania residents died of drug overdose that year. That's up from 3,264 fatal overdoses in Pennsylvania in 2015.

In 2016, Pennsylvania's drug overdose death rate was 37.9 per 100,000 people. Only West Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire had a higher overdose death rate than the Keystone State.

We shouldn't expect the news to get any better in 2017, according to CDC estimates.

In a provisional count shared on its website, the CDC says there were already 5,260 drug overdose deaths in Pennsylvania for the 12-month period leading up to May 2017. That's a 55 percent increase from the prior year's provisional data. Some of the deaths — 0.4 percent — represented in the provisional data are still being investigated, the CDC says.

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