Members of the U.S. Army 1st Special Forces Command deliver food and water after Hurricane Maria swept through the island Oct. 5, 2017, in Utuado, Puerto Rico. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images Study: 4,645 people died after Hurricane Maria, far more than official estimate

At least 4,645 people died amid the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico — more than 70 times the official government death toll of 64, according to a new study from Harvard University.

Locals, journalists and public health experts have for months questioned the government estimate of deaths from the storm, which caused more than $90 billion in damage.


President Donald Trump, however, said in October that Puerto Rico officials should be “very proud” of the low death toll.

The study, published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is based on household surveys of more than 3,000 homes in the territory, where researchers found a boom in the mortality rate between late September and late December 2017.

The authors of the study, which was largely funded by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, described the official death count as a “substantial underestimate" and called it evidence of the “inattention of the U.S. government to the frail infrastructure of Puerto Rico.”

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“The timely estimation of the death toll after a natural disaster is critical to defining the scale and severity of the crisis and to targeting interventions for recovery,” they wrote.

Researchers found that “interruption of medical care was the primary cause” of the high mortality rate that came after the storm made landfall.

With the 2018 hurricane season in swing, the authors also urged chronically ill patients, communities and health care providers to develop contingency plans for future disasters.

Carlos R. Mercader, executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, said in a statement that officials would analyze the report, adding, "We have always expected the number to be higher than what was previously reported."

He said the Puerto Rico government has commissioned a report from George Washington University, which he said would be released “soon.”

Trump said in October that the storm had been less devastating than Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but the new study indicates that may not be true. Hurricane Katrina resulted in the deaths of 1,833 people, according to FEMA.

"Every death is a horror," Trump said at the time, "but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous — hundreds and hundreds of people that died — and you look at what happened here with, really, a storm that was just totally overpowering ... no one has ever seen anything like this."

Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) said after the report was released Tuesday that the apparent undercounting of deaths “concealed” the impact of Hurricane Maria on the territory.

“By obscuring this, many were left to believe the Trump Administration’s mythology that Puerto Rico was not hit hard by Maria,” Velázquez said in a statement. “We must get to the bottom of this discrepancy.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Last year, Velázquez and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) asked a government watchdog to investigate how Puerto Rican officials “originally arrived at such a low number.”

