NEW ORLEANS - Almost six months later than Hurricane Katrina, above 1,300 bodies have been found, but the actual death toll is obviously higher. How much higher, no one can speak with any confidence.

Hundreds of people are still unaccounted for, and a number of of them again, no one is confident how many — were possibly washed into the Gulf of Mexico, drowned while their fishing boats sank, swept into Lake Pontchartrain or alligator-infected swamps, or covered under flattened homes, said Dr. Louis Cataldie, Louisiana medical examiner.

Cataldie noted that the coffins, disgorged from the earth by the floodwaters, have been establish large distances from their graveyards, and “if we have coffins that have washed 30 miles away, I can promise you there are people who have.”

“The likelihood is there are people we will not find,” he said.

New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard said a last sweep of homes in the overwhelmed Ninth Ward will be completed this month with help from federal officials. After that, he said, any more bodies found will almost certainly be discovered in out-of-the-way places by hunters or fishermen.

But neither he nor Cataldie would undertaking a guess as to how many undiscovered sufferers are out there.