Puerto Rican officials acknowledging more deaths

The Puerto Rico Department of Health released data late Friday that show there were at least 1,400 additional deaths on the island in the months after Hurricane Maria as compared with the prior year.

It was the first time in months that the territorial government has released mortality data, and the numbers indicate that the death toll from the hurricane was far greater than the official tally of 64.

The data show that deaths were far higher in September and October than in the prior two years. According to the new data, 3,040 people died in Puerto Rico in October 2017 — the first full month after the devastating storm hit on Sept. 20 — an increase of 680 over the prior year.

The government tallied 11,459 deaths from September to the end of December as compared with 10,062 during the same period in 2016, a 14 percent increase. The agency’s numbers do not certify whether those 1,400 additional deaths are attributable, directly or indirectly, to the hurricane.

Up until Friday, the agency had declined to release finalized mortality data while its investigators In some areas, there’s been no rebuilding process in Puerto Rico. Here, Arden Dragoni holds a photo taken on Oct. 5, 2017, that shows him with his wife and their three children amid the remains of his hurricane-ravaged home. He’s standing in the same spot in his home, which remains in shambles in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. The unemployed construction worker and security guard is separated from his family, as his wife and his children live in a FEMA-subsidized apartment and he lives with his father. work with researchers from George Washington University to review territory archives.

The new data were released three days after Harvard researchers released the results of a study that found the mortality rate was much higher than previously known and estimated that at least 4,600 people died in the nearly three months after the storm — a 62 percent increase in the mortality rate compared with 2016.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week, found that health-care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the

chronically ill had significant impacts on the mortality rate.

Puerto Rico’s government faced immediate scrutiny after initially reporting that 16 people had died as a result of the storm. That number kept rising until early December, when authorities said 64 had died. The official tally has come under intense criticism as residents, news organizations and official studies have placed the toll at far higher levels.

The Harvard study authors said that like reporters and news organizations suing the Puerto Rico government for access, their requests for official data also were denied. Gov. Ricardo Rosselló told CNN that he was unaware of his government withholding data and that there would be “hell to pay” if that information wasn’t released.

Wanda Llovet, chief of the Department of Health’s Demographic Registry, defended her agency Friday, saying it provided fatality information in “accordance with the public policy of transparency,” according to a statement that accompanied the data release.

The data show a much smaller increase in overall deaths than those estimated by the Harvard study, which included surveys of thousands of Puerto Rico residents. George Washington University officials said their government-funded investigation, which will look at fatalities up to February, has taken longer than expected; GW plans to release a statistical analysis using the demographic data sometime over the summer.