Nearly two months after the Category 4 Hurricane Maria barrelled into Puerto Rico, 60 percent of Puerto Ricans still don’t have power.
A lack of cell phone service plagues one in 10 and around 15 percent of gas stations are still closed.
Excess standing water, lack of access to clean drinking water, and piles of debris are breeding grounds for waterborne and mosquito-borne diseases.
Knowlton, who studied health effects in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York, listed off all the potential public health concerns aside from those illnesses: carbon monoxide poisoning from using generators improperly, spoiled food, unusable medicine, medical devices that don’t work without power, skin infections, and, in the long term, respiratory issues resulting from mold.
“You would do it, I would do it, anyone would do it,” said Knowlton.
BuzzFeed first reported that over 900 bodies were cremated on the island since Sept. 20 when the storm hit, but none were attributed to the hurricane, which has raised questions about the legitimacy of how those deaths were counted.
A photograph of doctors performing surgery by flashlight was noted in The Atlantic.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren along with 11 others wrote a letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requesting information on the spread of water and vector-borne diseases in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands during the recovery from Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
The U.S. Virgin Islands has also seen at least one case of leptospirosis and a case of Zika.
A Senate hearing on the recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands is scheduled for Tuesday morning.