Unless there is a late update, Indiana County finished 2019 with 29 total drug overdose deaths, the same number we reported two weeks ago. That’s an increase of six over the 2018 total, but still below the peak overdose death years of 53 in 2016 and 41 in 2017. The statistics use data reported by Indiana County Coroner Jerry Overman Jr. to OverdoseFreePA, a website administered by the University of Pittsburgh.
Sixty-six percent of the victims were males, all of them white, and 76 percent were between the ages of 35 and 64. Thirteen of the 29 deaths were in the 15701 (Indiana) zip code, but that number could be a reflection of the fact that Indiana Regional Medical Center is in that zip code, and victims may have overdosed elsewhere and been pronounced dead at IRMC.
The three drugs most often found in fatal overdoses in Indiana County in 2019 were fentanyl, heroin, and acetyl fentanyl. Those three drugs were found in 69 percent of the deaths.
Neighboring Westmoreland County, which has roughly four times the population of Indiana County, had 75 overdose deaths. Cambria County, with a population that tops Indiana County by about 48,000 people, had only one more overdose death. Armstrong County had thirteen overdose deaths in 2019. Jefferson and Clearfield counties did not report data, although in previous years they did.
