John Bacon of USA Today is reporting Harvard University released a study that reports Hurricane Maria killed 70 times more people than the official toll offered by government authorities. Bacon writes:
“Authorities in Puerto Rico placed the death toll at 64 after Maria roared through the island Sept. 20, destroying buildings and knocking out power to virtually the entire U.S. territory of more than 3 million people.
Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, however, surveyed more than 3,000 households on the battered island. By extrapolating those findings, researchers determined that at least 4,645 “excess deaths” occurred during the storm and the weeks that followed.
The researchers said the number was conservative and that the death toll likely exceeded 5,000. Many of the deaths were due in part to power outages that crippled medical and other services.
The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.”
Read the entire article at USA Today.
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