“Until then, patients had to endure the pain,” said Dr. Victoriano Sambale.
The winds leveled tens of thousands of homes in region, which is used to typhoons. In some places, tsunami-like storm surges swept up to one-kilometer (mile) inland, causing more destruction and loss of life.
At least 580,000 people have been displaced. Most of the death and destruction appears concentrated on the islands of Samar and Leyte.
The damaged infrastructure and bad communications links made a conclusive death toll difficult to estimate.
The official toll from a national disaster agency rose to 1,883 on Tuesday. President Benigno Aquino III told CNN in a televised interview that the toll could be closer to 2,000 or 2,500, lower than an earlier estimate from two officials on the ground who said they feared as many as 10,000 might be dead.
