[ad_1]
MANILA: More than 140,000 people were forced into tight shelters when a powerful typhoon hit the Philippines on Friday (May 15), exacerbating the nation’s battle with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Typhoon Vongfong has shed heavy rain since it roared ashore Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people on their way to the shoreline or in flimsy houses.
Ad
The storm struck when tens of millions of Filipinos are huddled at home against the coronavirus, but at least 141,700 had to flee due to the powerful storm, disaster officials said.
“We have to wear masks and apply spacing at all times,” local police officer Carlito Abriz told AFP. “It is difficult to enforce because they (the evacuees) are stressed. But we are doing our best.”
READ: Typhoon forces risky evacuations in the Philippines hit by coronavirus
Authorities have said they will run shelters at half their capacity, provide masks for people who do not have them, and try to keep families together.
However, many spaces normally used as storm shelters have become quarantine sites for people suspected of being infected with coronavirus.
Fortunately, the central region where the storm hit first is not one of the hotspots in the Philippine outbreak, which has seen more than 11,800 infected and 790 dead.
It is not surprising that disasters overlap in the Philippines, and some 22,000 people were evacuated from the slopes of the active Mayon volcano before the arrival of the typhoon.
Torrential rains in the past have sent cascading landslides down the volcano and into communities below, burying and killing those on the way.
Typhoons are a dangerous and disruptive part of life in the Philippine archipelago, which receives an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year.
Storms put millions of people in disaster-prone areas in a state of constant poverty and reconstruction.
A study conducted in July 2019 by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank said the most frequent storms cut one percent of the Philippine economy, and the strongest storms cut economic output by almost three percent.
The deadliest cyclone on record in the country was Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in 2013.
