National disaster agency stops counting Tacloban's dead
Philippines' the national disaster agency has stopped releasing the updated casualty number from Tacloban City and the rest of the Eastern Visayas after placing on Wednesday the latest official death toll from typhoon Haiyan at 4,011 people.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reported 1,602 missing and 18,557 injured.
The official death toll did not reflect the 1,172 bodies that a 300-member task force collected from the streets of Tacloban City from November 16 to 19.
The council reported only 694 dead in Tacloban, a number that has been unchanged since November 13, or five days after Haiyan devastated large swaths of the Visayas and parts of northern Palawan province.
NDRRMC executive director Eduardo del Rosario said the council was not updating the death toll from the Eastern Visayas because it had changed the policy on accounting for the dead.
“The count that should be submitted should be duly signed by the local chief executive and the city health officer,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
