The federal disaster response in Puerto Rico is now in its eighth week, and reporters have continued to question the official count of people who died as a result of Hurricane Maria. The official count has been under intense scrutiny since Buzzfeed reported last month that government officials, in the immediate aftermath of the storm, approved the cremation of 911 bodies, none of which were reflected in the official death toll. Those people were all judged to have died of natural causes having nothing to do with the storm, despite the fact that Puerto Rico’s medical examiner reviewed only medical records, not the bodies themselves.
Now the Associated Press reports that the average number of deaths each day in Puerto Rico rose sharply after the storm. From AP’s report:
The pace of deaths quickened on Puerto Rico immediately after Hurricane Maria — well beyond the numbers officially attributed to the storm.
The U.S. territory reported an average of 82 deaths a day in the two weeks before Maria hit. That average increased to 117 from Sept. 20 to 30, though the rate has declined since then.
The AP also reports that the official death toll has inched up, from 54 to 55.
Here at the Rachel Maddow Show, we also have been chasing down data on one particular sliver of the official count: deaths from the water-borne illness leptospirosis. In the eight weeks since the storm hit, clean water has been so scarce that the 3.4 million Americans in Puerto Rico have been forced to drink from streams and rivers — all of which can be a breeding ground for lepto.









