(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.
|Residents without basic services for months
The research, funded by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and others, is likely to prompt renewed scrutiny of both the federal government and the commonwealth's handling of the recovery. Large swaths of the island were without electricity and other basic services for months after the disaster, in some cases leaving dialysis patients and the elderly without care. The White House has been the object of criticism for its allocation of federal resources, but the commonwealth generated the death count.
The toll has shaped public discourse around Hurricane Maria. When Trump visited the island about two weeks after the storm, he seemed to pat himself on the back for the low numbers, comparing them favorably to “a real catastrophe like Katrina.”
Recommended For You
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader
Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
