Deadlier than Katrina & 9/11: Hurricane Maria Killed 4,645 in Puerto Rico, 70 Times Official Toll | Democracy Now!

31.5.18

Deadlier than Katrina & 9/11: Hurricane Maria Killed 4,645 in Puerto Rico, 70 Times Official Toll | Democracy Now!: A stunning new study by researchers at Harvard has revealed the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria may be 70 times higher than official count of 64. The new research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, says the death toll is at least 4,645—and perhaps as many as 5,740. President Trump has so far not responded to the new study. But in October, during a visit to Puerto Rico, Trump boasted about the low official death count. With a death toll of at least 4,645, Hurricane Maria would become the second-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history—behind only the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 which killed as many as 12,000 people in Texas. The Harvard study found that “interruption of medical care was the primary cause of sustained high mortality rates in the months after the hurricane, a finding consistent with the widely reported disruption of health systems.