In Case You Haven't Heard…

Abstract

If you read the recent interview Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), did with Kaiser Health News (https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/clinical‐care/vaping‐opioid‐addiction‐accelerate‐coronavirus‐risks‐says‐nida‐director), you may have been surprised to see that she said, “Methadone clinics are closing. If they're not closing, they're unable to process the same number of patients — because the staff is getting sick.…” We contacted the NIDA press office to find out where she got this information. The “senior media manager (contractor)” sent this response: “We wish that we had more concrete information to share. As you might expect, data and aggregated, hard numbers on what is happening in communities is difficult to come by these days. We are hearing anecdotal reports, which Nora has mentioned in recent interviews. A good source to contact might be the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence — they may have a better sense of how things are playing out, or be able to speak to that more directly.” Mark Parrino, president of AATOD, did not have more information, however. “I have not heard about program closings, with the exception of those two programs in Virginia about four weeks ago. They reopened after 14 days. There may be other programs that have closed due to COVID‐19, but I have not heard about them. I do not know what Dr. Volkow is referencing. Is she talking about programs that are temporarily closing due to COVID‐19 infection? In reading through the article, this would appear to be the case. Or is she referencing program closing as a trend? When Nora says things like this, I generally check with Jack Stein, who is the chief of staff at NIDA. He is quite sharp and may be able to provide some background.” We subsequently emailed Stein to follow up, but he did not respond.