Hurricane Maria Efrain Diaz Figueroa, right, walks by his sister's home destroyed in the passing of Hurricane Maria, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Monday, Oct. 9, 2017. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

(Bloomberg) – 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.

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