Where Is the Media Getting Their Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria Death Numbers

Death toll from Puerto Ricos Hurricane Maria raised from 64 to almost 3,000

By Danica Coto
2021-12-18 09:23:41

Puerto Rico's governor raised the island's official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975 on Tuesday after an independent study found that the number of people who succumbed in the desperate, sweltering months after the storm had been severely under-counted.

The new estimate of nearly 3,000 dead in the six months after Maria devastated the island in September 2017 and knocked out the entire electrical grid was made by researchers with the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

WATCH: Puerto Rico concedes Hurricane Maria killed over 1,400 people despite official death toll pegged at 14

'That caused a number of issues,' Goldman said, adding that people were forced to exert themselves physically or were exposed to intense heat without fans or air conditioning. 'It's fairly striking that you have so many households without electricity for so long. That's unusual in the U.S. after a disaster.'

Puerto Rico's government released data in June showing increases in several illnesses in 2017 that could have been linked to the storm: Cases of sepsis, a serious bloodstream infection usually caused by bacteria, rose from 708 in 2016 to 835 last year. Deaths from diabetes went from 3,151 to 3,250, and deaths from heart illnesses increased from 5,417 to 5,586.

Bethzaida Rosado said government and health care officials were not prepared for the storm, and she is still angry her 76-year-old mother died because oxygen tanks were not available on the island after the hurricane.

The researchers found that the risk of death was 45 percent higher for those living in impoverished communities, and that men older than 65 saw a continuous elevated risk of death.

They also reported that physicians and others told them that Puerto Rico's government did not notify them about federal guidelines on how to document deaths related to a major disaster.

'Others expressed reluctance to relate deaths to hurricanes due to concern about the subjectivity of this determination and about liability,' the report said.

For the study, the researchers reviewed mortality data, including deaths by age, sex and municipality of residence, from July 2010 to February 2018. They also took into account an 8 percent drop in Puerto Rico's population in the six months after the storm, when tens of thousands fled because of the damage.

However, they did not share details of the methodology, saying those will be released if the study is published in a scientific journal.

'We did not cherry-pick, I can promise you,' Goldman said. 'We used very rigorous methodology.'

The study also found that government emergency plans in place when Maria hit were not designed for hurricanes greater than a Category 1. Maria was a Category 4 with 154 mph winds. Damage was estimated at more than $100 billion.

The researchers made several recommendations, including more emergency planning and government training for doctors on filling out death certificates.

They also said the public health system needs to be strengthened, though Goldman said they don't know yet whether those weaknesses contributed to storm-related deaths.

She added that she has doubts whether Puerto Rico can adopt any of the recommendations. The island is trying to restructure a portion of its more than $70 billion public debt amid a 12-year recession.

Where Is the Media Getting Their Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria Death Numbers

Source: https://newsca.ca/weather/death-toll-from-puerto-ricos-hurricane-maria-raised-from-64-to-almost-3000

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