As it scrambles to address a rapid rise in fentanyl overdose deaths, Washington state’s largest county by population is “struggling” to make space for all the bodies piling up in its morgue, an official said last week. “The Medical Examiner’s Office is now struggling with the issue of storing bodies because the fentanyl-related death toll continues to climb,” Dr. Faisal Khan, the public health director for Seattle and King County, explained in a recent Board of Health meeting, according to conservative-talk radio station KTTH. “Obviously, they have finite space in the coolers they use and that space is now being exceeded on a regular basis.” In 2022, King County recorded an average of 57 deaths a month from fentanyl overdoses, according to publicly available data. “When the final review of fatal overdoses is completed in the upcoming weeks, I fear that 2022 will set another heartbreaking record for fatal overdoses in King County,” Khan continued. “It will more than double the number of lives lost compared to just three years ago in 2019.” In January, the county had already noted 31 overdose deaths as of Monday—more than one a day.
