MORE than 140,000 people were forced into cramped shelters today as a powerful typhoon hammers the Philippines, compounding the nation’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

Typhoon Vongfong has dumped heavy rains since it roared ashore yesterday, 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 Covid-19, but at least 141,700 have had to flee because of the powerful storm, said disaster officials.

“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.”

Authorities have said they will run shelters at half capacity, provide masks to people who do not have them and try to keep families grouped together.

However, many spaces normally used as storm shelters have been converted into quarantine sites for suspected coronavirus patients.

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.

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. – AFP, May 15, 2020.