Thousands hunkered down in virus lockdown hit by Typhoon Vongfong
More than 140,000 people in a country hit by the coronavirus pandemic are riding out a typhoon in emergency shelters.
Typhoon Vongfong has dumped heavy rains since it roared ashore on Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in its path on the coast or in flimsy homes.
The storm hit as tens of millions of Filipinos are hunkered down at home against the coronavirus, but at least 141,700 have had to flee because of the powerful storm, disaster officials said.
"We have to wear masks and apply distancing at all times," local police official Carlito Abriz told AFP.
"It's difficult to enforce because they (the evacuees) are stressed. But we are doing our best."
Shelters are being run at half capacity, according to authorities and masks are being provided to people who do not have them, while families are trying to be grouped together.
In an evacuation room, which could shelter up to 40 families before, only four families could be accommodated now as a safeguard against infections.
The occupants should know each other and are required to report any infected villager, Office of Civil Defence director Claudio Yucot told the Associated Press from Albay province in the Bicol region, which has had dozens of coronavirus infections, including four deaths and remains under quarantine.
“Our ease of movement has been limited by COVID.”
“In the evacuation centres, there are more challenges,” he said.
The problem is, many spaces used as storm shelters have been converted into quarantine sites for people suspected to have contracted the coronavirus.
The Phillipines has 11,876 confirmed cases and 790 death according to Johns Hopkins data.
There was no immediate reports of casualties or major damage as authorities surveyed regions where the typhoon has passed.
Fortunately the central region where the storm struck first is not one of the hotspots of the Philippines' outbreak, which has seen more than 11,800 infected and 790 dead.
The typhoon’s maximum sustained wind has weakened to 125 kilometres per hour with gusts of 165 kph but it remains dangerous especially in coastal and low-lying villages, forecasters said, adding Vongfong was expected to blow out of the country’s north on Sunday.
Common for disasters to ‘overlap’ in the Philippines
It is not unheard of for disasters to overlap in the Philippines, and some 22,000 people were evacuated from the slopes of the active Mayon volcano ahead of the typhoon's arrival.
Heavy rains in the past have sent landslides of debris cascading down the volcano and onto the communities below, burying and killing those in the way.
Typhoons are a dangerous and disruptive part of life in the Philippine archipelago, which gets hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year.
The storms put millions of people in disaster-prone areas in a state of constant poverty and rebuilding.
A July 2019 study by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank said the most frequent storms lop one percent off the Philippine economy, with the stronger ones cutting economic output by nearly three percent.
The country's deadliest cyclone on record was Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in 2013.
with Associated Press and AFP
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