"This tragic milestone represents an increase of 28.5%" over the same period just a year earlier, said Dr. Deb Houry with the CDC in a call with reporters Wednesday.
Dr. Rahul Gupta, who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, called the surge in drug fatalities "unacceptable."
"An overdose is a cry for help," Gupta said during the press conference. "For far too many people, that cry goes unanswered. This requires a whole lot of government response and evidence-based strategies."
Experts blame the continuing surge on the spread of more dangerous street drugs and on disruptions to drug treatment programs caused by the pandemic.
"[Overdoses] are driven both by fentanyl and also by methamphetamines," said Dr. Nora Volkow, who heads the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health.
She predicted the surge of fatalities would continue because of the spread of more dangerous street drugs.
"They are among the most addictive drugs that we know of and the most lethal," Volkow said.
In recent years, Mexican drug cartels have pivoted to manufacturing and distributing fentanyl and methamphetamines, which are cheaper to produce and can be shipped in small quantities that are difficult to detect.
Anne Milgram, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, acknowledged Wednesday that efforts to slow trafficking of these drugs haven't worked.
"This year alone DEA has seized enough fentanyl to provide every member of the U.S. population with a lethal dose," Milgram said. "We are still seizing more fentanyl each and every day."