Toronto Public Health issued a drug alert Saturday after the city's paramedic services received the highest number of suspected opioid overdose calls in a 24-hour period since monitoring began in 2017.

TPH said preliminary data indicates that Toronto paramedics attended about 40 overdose calls, including three deaths, on Friday.

"While specific details are not yet known, there appears to be a range of substances from the unregulated drug supply involved," TPH said. The local health unit noted that the city's drug checking services reported finding highly potent drugs in samples checked in the past months.

Following the alert on Saturday, Councillor Joe Cressy, who is also the chair of Toronto's Board of Health, said on Twitter that "this is a preventable emergency." Toronto Mayor John Tory tweeted that the overdose situation "required urgent intervention from the healthcare system in particular" and should be addressed immediately.

Nirmala Raniga, the founder of the Chopra Addiction and Wellness Center in British Columbia, said the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people into isolation, pushing many to use drugs when they are alone.

"Addiction is all about isolation. It's about shame. It's this stigma around people using drugs. And we as a community need to understand that it's not the drugs, it's the person, it's that human being that is in pain," Raniga said in an interview with CP24 Saturday night.

"And we as a society, as a community, as a government need to do more to support those who are suffering with the current crisis."

The drug alert comes a day after the city reported a grim milestone in the opioid crisis, with at least 34 suspected opioid overdose deaths in December 2020.

"This tragic record further proves what we already know: that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the already deadly overdose crisis in Toronto," Cressy said in a statement on Friday.

TPH said the deaths only represent overdoses attended by Toronto Paramedic Services and therefore "does not capture all deaths due to opioid poisoning."

Preliminary information also shows that Toronto paramedics attended 30 fatal calls for suspected opioid overdoses during the first 26 days of 2021.

Tory said on Friday that these deaths are "tragic, unacceptable and evidence of a real health crisis."

"The status quo is producing tragedy and loss of life on an unprecedented scale and cannot be continued," the mayor said in a statement.

"Our country and our province have the science, the know-how and the money to address this. All that is missing is the will. We have to fix that."

On Thursday, the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police noted that overdose deaths are outpacing those from the COVID-19 pandemic and homicides in British Columbia and likely Ontario as he urged Canada to decriminalize hard-drug possession.

"Over the last six years, 18,000 Canadians have lost their lives to drug addiction," Bryan Larkin said.

"If 18,000 people lost their lives in traffic collisions, our country and our communities would not accept that. There would be outcry."

- with files from the Canadian Press