(Radio Iowa) – Preliminary information from the Iowa Department of Public Health shows a 35-percent increase in opioid overdose deaths in 2020 when compared to 2019. The director of the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy, Dale Woolery says the record 212 deaths come despite a lot of work on the issue. “We would like to see the numbers go the other direction and they had for a couple of years. I think the moral of the story as we are looking at various sources of data on the opioid epidemic is that epidemic is still with us,” Woolery says.

Woolery says not all the trends in the fight have been negative. “We have made progress and we do have one of the lower rates of drug overdose deaths in the nation — and we don’t want to rest on that,” Woolery says. He says there’s been a lot done to address the issue. “Some of the progress includes ramping up access to medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction. There’s more access and use of naloxone –which is the opioid overdose reversal or rescue drug,” according to Woolery. “There are fewer prescription opioids being prescribed, and the prescription monitoring program is being used more by health professionals to try and control for the prescription opioid outflow and misuse.”

Woolery says some of the other factors in the increase in death include the mixing of black-market fentanyl into heroin by drug dealers. “So as a user — if you think you are getting heroin or just a little bit of fentanyl, but instead you are getting pure fentanyl or something that is mostly fentanyl — that may not be what you thought. That could be one of the contributing factors to some of the opioid deaths,” he says.Woolery says the pandemic and the isolation it brought on is also a factor. “It’s like a lot of other things with the pandemic — because of the increased isolation that has occurred — there is less opportunity to monitor behavior and to intervene when it is called for,” Woolery says.

The 212 overdose deaths broke the record of 206 deaths set in 2017.

(Radio Iowa) – The pandemic found many people dusting off their bicycles that had been sitting in the garage as they looked to get out of the house. Bike Central owner Kevin Richards in Le Mars says the interest is bikes followed along with a bigger pattern. “There was a huge uptick in sales all across the recreation industry, and particularly in bicycles. We are seeing that maintained and I anticipate that as the weather gets nicer we will continue to see an increase in the number of people — at least in inquires or looking to purchase. Or even just doing some repairs on their existing bicycle,” Richards says.

Richards says they took action as they started to see the interest in bicycles going up. “This last fall we were pretty well made aware that bicycles were going to be in short supply. We made the decision to really bring in a lot of service parts that we normally don’t keep on hand, because if we need a service part that we don’t have, we can usually get it within a day,” according to Richards. “Knowing that there would be some supply problems, we started stocking in a supply of repair parts.”

The Bike Central shop owner says the majority of bicycles come from southeast Asia and the global spread of the COVID virus forced plants and shipping to shut down, leading to the lack of supply. Richards says the parts companies are hesitant to ramp up production. “I do know that a lot of the equipment manufacturers — the people who make the shifting and the gearing — have decided to not really increase production because they’re not sure that this isn’t just a bubble in demand in the biking industry,” Richards says. “So we are kind of constrained to what they are going to produce. And I believe from certain conversations that they’ll be certain parts that we won’t’ be able to see until the fourth quarter of 2022.”

He says the types of bikes sold give an indication that a lot of people are just looking to get out of the house and do something. “Most sales are what I would call an active bike geometry. So something that is suitable for trail riding around here, city riding. Obviously we don’t have a lot of mountains,” he says. He says for now they will try to help people fix up the bikes they have available until they can look at a new bike once the supply gets back to normal. Richards says the interest in Le Mars is even higher after it was learned they will be hosting RAGBRAI this year.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa households with more than one vehicle could be ineligible for food stamps if a Senate G-O-P plan inserted in a budget bill becomes law. The plan also calls for a new system to investigate an Iowan’s financial situation to determine if they’re eligible for food assistance or Medicaid coverage. Senator Mark Costello, a Republican from Imogene, says the goal is to more quickly find out who is and who is not eligible for public assistance.

“To help people that need the resources to have them and not waste them on people that are really not eligible and do not need them so much,” Costello says. Tom Chapman, director of the Iowa Catholic Conference, says the proposed asset limit is very low.

“It also says that households with more than one vehicle would be at risk of losing their eligibility for food stamps,” Chapman says. “Just the fact of owning two cars, especially in rural Iowa, doesn’t mean that people don’t need help to get food.” Chapman says that could disqualify one out of every six Iowans who are receiving food assistance today.

Senate Republicans passed a bill earlier this year outlining these income verification plans, but House Republicans didn’t advance it.

(Radio Iowa) – A northwest Iowa teenager found unconscious Monday night at a hog site in northern Kossuth County has died. According to the Kossuth County Sheriff’s Office, emergency personnel were dispatched to a hog-site building about five miles southwest of Swea City just after 9 p.m. Monday after a person was found unconscious. Upon arrival, a female was found unresponsive and was transported to Kossuth Regional Health Center in Algona. The female had reportedly been assisting in the cleaning and power washing of the facility and was found lying on the floor by another person who was also working in the area.

The female, identified as 17-year-old Victoria Marie Parra Lerdo of Rockwell City, was pronounced dead at the hospital. The State Medical Examiner’s Office in Ankeny will be conducting an autopsy to determine a cause of death.