Climate Changed
Hurricane Maria Likely Killed More Than 5,000 People in Puerto Rico
A new Harvard University study shows Hurricane Maria probably killed more than 5,000 people in Puerto Rico last year.
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Hurricane Maria probably killed about 5,000 people in Puerto Rico last year even though the official count remains at just 64, according to a Harvard University study released Tuesday.
Such mortality would far outstrip the 1,833 who died in Hurricane Katrina in 2005, belying President Donald Trump’s boasts about the low death toll of the storm that occurred on his watch. Tuesday’s study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said delayed or interrupted health care accounted for a third of the deaths in Maria, which hit the commonwealth in September 2017.