Tens of thousands of people were being evacuated to safety in the southern and central Philippines as a powerful typhoon approached.
Tens of thousands of villagers have been moved in advance to emergency shelters, including schools, gymnasiums and other government buildings in voluntary or forced evacuations, officials said. The evacuations were complicating government efforts to discourage crowds after health officials this week detected the omicron variant in two travelers who arrived in the country from Japan and Nigeria.
The Philippines is among the hardest hit countries in Southeast Asia by the pandemic, with confirmed infections of more than 2.8 million and more than 50,000 deaths. Quarantine restrictions have been eased and more businesses have been allowed to reopen in recent weeks after an intensified vaccination campaign caused daily infections to dwindle to a few hundred from more than 26,000 during an alarming spike in September.
Governor Ben Evardone of Eastern Samar province said he temporarily stopped vaccinations in his region of nearly half a million people due to the approaching typhoon. More than 70 percent of villagers in the province have received at least one vaccine shot each against COVID-19 and Evardone expressed concern over vaccination delays because some vaccines stored in Eastern Samar will expire in a few months.
“It’s impossible to observe social distancing, it will really be tough,” Evardone told The Associated Press. “What we do is we cluster evacuees by families. We don’t mix different people in the same place as a precaution.” About 20 storms and typhoons batter the Philippines each year. The archipelago is also located in the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire” region, making it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.
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