Earlier on Wednesday, government officials from Puerto Rico held a press conference about how the island is processing and certifying deaths since Hurricane Maria hit landfall on September 20. The press conference was attended by Secretary of Public Security Héctor M. Pesquera, Edwin Crespo from the Department of Forensic Sciences and Wanda Llovet, director of Puerto Rico’s Demographic Registry. First, even with claims that the death toll caused by Hurricane Maria could be higher, the press conference gave a lengthy explanation as to why the death count is still at 55, as the following official document states:
However, at one point of the press conference, Llovet shared the latest certified death counts from September and October, along with daily averages for September. As the following tweet from our founder reported, there was a significant increase in deaths after September 20 but there is no real explanation why:
From September 1-19, 2017, #PuertoRico averaged 82 deaths per day. From September 20 (day #HurricaneMaria hit) to September 30, 2017, it averaged 117 per day. That is 35 more deaths per day on average.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 8, 2017
In addition, when compared to previous years, the death count in September, 2017 was significantly higher (and with a smaller population too):
September 2015: 2,242 registered deaths
September 2016: 2,366 registered deaths
September 2017: 2,838 registered deaths#PuertoRico— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 8, 2017
Llovet also shared information about October death tolls, but said that these numbers were not final because the time to process the certification deaths went from the normal four days before the hurricane to 14 days after the hurricane:
October, 2015: 2,379 registered deaths
October 2016: 2,353 registered deaths
October 2017: 2,119 registered deaths (but these numbers will be changing bc PR gov't is taking 14 days to register deaths)#PuertoRico— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 8, 2017
There were other takeaways from the Wednesday press conference. Here are just a few:
Secretary Pesquera insisted that the PR gov't has followed every correct process in reporting deaths and @CDCgov has final say. #PuertoRico
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 8, 2017
From 9/20/17-10/30/17 there were 36 suicides in #PuertoRico. From 9/20/16-10/30/16 there were 26 suicides.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 8, 2017
But still only 55 certified deaths from the hurricane.
That is what the government of Puerto Rico is saying, even though demographer José López said this (in Spanish) about the noticeable spike in September deaths: “The reality is that this is not normal, and we have to know that there was a phenomenon here, and that is a concrete fact… the reality that if you see the data, one sees an increase.”
Here is the full press conference in Spanish if you want to watch it:
