Natasha Vaughn is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media an overdose spike alert has been issued for Columbia County. Greener Pathways Program Director Carl Quinn said the county had one overdose around 5 p.m. January 20, in the northern part of the county and a second overdose occurred around 4:30 a.m. early January 21, in the eastern part of the county. Neither of the overdoses was fatal. Ulster County is also currently experiencing an overdose spike experiencing four nonfatal overdoses in a 24-hour period, Quinn said. He said it is possible the cases could all be connected. The cause of the overdoses is not known, but if they involve the synthetic opioid fentanyl, there could be more overdoses in the area. “... [It] would seem that if it was fentanyl it would be likely that there will be more overdoses,” Quinn said. “That’s part of the reason we want to get the alert out so quick[ly] is so that maybe we can prevent some of those from happening if people know that it’s out there.” This is the second overdose spike alert in Columbia County in January. So far, there have been 9 overdoses in Columbia and 11 in Greene County. None of the overdoses were fatal. Greener Pathways encourages people who need Narcan or fentanyl test strips to text NARCANKIT to 21000 and a Greener Pathways peer advocate will respond. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.