PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

April 25, 2018

INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS ORDERS PUBLICATION OF MORTALITY DATA

The decision of the Board of Directors paves the way for greater transparency to save lives after future hurricanes in Puerto Rico and supports ongoing efforts to review the number of deaths as a result of Hurricane Maria.

The Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico (Institute) announced today the approval of a series of methodological standards that must be used to measure the number of fatalities from future natural disasters in Puerto Rico, as well as to produce final estimates of the number of deaths as a result of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, a process that still remains incomplete today.

The methodological standards approved by the Institute's Board of Directors include: (1) the need to conduct a case-level epidemiological study to comprehensively measure the number of fatalities from any natural disaster, (2) the sources of information that should be used for this type of epidemiological study, (3) the criteria that will be used to attribute a specific death to a natural disaster, and (4) the set of mortality data that must be published online and updated daily.

The rules were approved in the Resolution No. 2018-03 of the Institute's Board approved this week. The Resolution also orders PRIS staff to take all necessary actions permitted under the Institute Enabling Act to ensure that these methodological standards are adopted and implemented by the Government of Puerto Rico.

For example, under the Resolution No. 2018-03, PRIS expert staff and financial resources are available to ensure that an exhaustive case-level epidemiological study is carried out to complete the review of the number of fatalities from Hurricane Maria. In addition, the Resolution requires that any epidemiological study of cases of disaster-related mortality in Puerto Rico be able to take advantage of information from the following sources: death certificates, medical records, forensic pathology files and the testimony of family members.

In addition, the Resolution adopts the criteria and classification structure developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for the attribution of a specific death to a natural disaster. These criteria are described in the Reference guide for the certification of deaths in the event of a natural, human-induced or chemical/radioactive disaster.

Finally, the Resolution describes the specific data fields that must be published and updated daily for each death on the Puerto Rico Open Data Portal:
https://data.pr.gov/. To do this, the Institute will use its authority, which includes powers such as subpoena, to request the necessary set of data from the Puerto Rico Health Department on a daily basis. The Institute will also be available to train staff from the Puerto Rico Department of Health, so that they can upload the necessary data sets themselves.

“As the next hurricane season approaches, we must work to ensure that Puerto Rico's data infrastructure is better prepared to inform our citizens and the world about conditions in Puerto Rico. In the case of mortality, allowing people on the other side of the world to see our latest death records allows scientists around the world to analyze our data, even when there is no electricity or Internet in Puerto Rico, to identify patterns that can save lives in a timely manner. We owe it to the hundreds, if not the thousands, of people who died as a result of Hurricane Maria, so that we never allow this to happen again,” said Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, executive director of the Institute.

Currently, the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety attributes only 64 deaths to Hurricane Maria. In December, after several independent researchers discovered that the number of fatalities from Hurricane Maria could be more than a thousand, the Government of Puerto Rico ordered a review of Maria's death toll and stopped providing the public with monthly mortality totals.

The Resolution of the Institute's Board explicitly recognizes that in the 3 months following the passage of hurricanes Irma and María over Puerto Rico, there were higher-than-average deaths in Puerto Rico, amounting to more than a thousand, and that this increase in deaths is probably related to the passage of hurricanes Irma and María over Puerto Rico. The resolution also aims to support the work of a group of independent researchers from George Washington University who were hired by the Government of Puerto Rico to analyze various issues related to mortality after Hurricane Maria.

The Institute's Board had been carefully analyzing and considering the approval of this Resolution, after it was able to restart its work last month. Previously, he had not been able to meet, even before hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in Puerto Rico, due to a legal dispute that arose last summer, after the Governor tried to dismiss several members of the Institute's Board of Directors without due process. The dispute was finally resolved in the first instance last month, following a court ruling that the Governor lacked authority to dismiss Board members without due process.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The Institute has in its inventory, accessible through https://estadisticas.pr.gov/, about 300 statistical products. In addition, it is a custodian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through https://data.pr.gov/ and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: https://www.indicadores.pr/.

In addition, as the leading entity of Puerto Rico's SDC, the Institute manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey and official statistics on Puerto Rico's decennial population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed through: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/.

For more information you can visit our website: https://estadisticas.pr.gov/. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook accounts (statistics.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics).

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes/ (787) 688-0401

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PRESS RELEASE

Call for paid internships announced at the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics

Students in statistics, mathematics, computer science, public administration, and others may apply

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute announced that, for the next two weeks, and as long as the available spaces are filled, the call for paid internships will be open for graduate students in statistics, mathematics, computer science or in any other area in which extensive use is made of statistics, including economics, planning, demography, epidemiology, biostatistics, criminology, sociology, public policy, public administration, business administration or other related ones. The opportunity also extends to undergraduate students, from any of the above-mentioned disciplines, who are candidates for graduation in the same academic year in which they participate in the program.

Those selected will have the opportunity to collaborate directly with professionals from the Institute, who have extensive experience in the fields of economics, epidemiology, education, demography, statistics, programming and administration, among others. In the same way, they will receive support from the Institute's staff in the major projects they carry out according to the area in which they are assigned. All this, as indicated, in a work and learning environment that allows them to apply their knowledge in a professional environment.

“We are pleased to offer this opportunity to graduate students, or undergraduate candidates for graduation, as they will not only gain experience, but we also help them prepare for the professional field of work. In the same way, it is always good to share with the new generations that they have a lot to contribute, particularly in one of the most developed areas in Puerto Rico, such as statistics,” said Dr. Orville M. Disdier, executive director of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, who added that, among the applicants, they are interested in identifying candidates with knowledge in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Microsoft Power BI, SQL and Python, and others.

It was reported that interested parties must complete an application that is available at Programa_Internado_2025_IEPR.pdf where, in addition, the requirements and documents they must provide are detailed. Once the application is completed, it must be sent along with the documents to the following email: programadeinternado@estadisticas.pr. The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute will receive the requests and they will go through an evaluation process. Applicants will then receive a formal notification with the decision made.

For more information, those interested who meet the requirements can contact Mrs. Rebeca Ortiz, Office Manager at the following email: rebeca.ortiz@estadisticas.pr.

The Internship Program of the Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico was created to promote the professional development of undergraduate students or graduates of university programs in statistics or related sciences at universities in Puerto Rico and other jurisdictions in the United States, to collaborate with the projects, studies and work carried out at the Institute.

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All migration indicators from Puerto Rico reach new records