The number of people who died in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria was at least 70 times higher than the official death toll, according to a study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers, from Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, worked with graduate students at the Carlos Albizu University and Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico, and others in Colorado and Boston, to conduct a survey of 3,299 randomly selected households in Puerto Rico — about 9,522 people.
They asked about all deaths and their causes between Sept. 20, when Hurricane Maria made landfall, and Dec. 31 of 2017.
Comparing those results with previous years’ death records, they calculated that 4,645 more people died in the final months of 2017, after the hurricane, compared with the same period the year prior — representing a 62% increase in the mortality rate after Maria.
The researchers then adjusted for the fact that their survey could not count people who lived alone and died as a result of the storm, leading to their final estimate of 5,740 hurricane-related deaths.
President Donald Trump, during his visit to the island in October, used the relatively low official death toll — which was then at 16 people — as a measure of how Puerto Rico had not experienced a “real catastrophe” akin to what New Orleans suffered following Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane Katrina had an estimated death toll of 1,833 victims
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