BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) — After killing hundreds and displacing thousands as it barreled through Mozambique and Malawi since late last week, Cyclone Freddy is set to move away from land Wednesday which should bring some relief to southern African regions that have been ravaged by its torrential rain and powerful winds.

The cyclone has killed at least 225 people in Malawi’s southern region including Blantyre, the country’s financial hub, according to local authorities. Another 88,000 people are displaced. In neighbouring Mozambique, officials say at least 20 people have died since the storm made landfall in the port town of Quelimane on Saturday night. Over 45,000 people are still holed up in shelters, with about 1,300 square kilometres (800 square miles) still under water, according to the European Union’s (EU) Copernicus satellite system.

READ: Death toll climbs as Cyclone Freddy slams Malawi, Mozambique

“There are many casualties — either wounded, missing, or dead and the numbers will only increase in the coming days,” said Guilherme Botelho, the emergency project coordinator in Blantyre for Doctors Without Borders. Malawi, which has been battling a cholera outbreak, is at risk of a resurgence of the disease, Botelho said, “especially since the vaccine coverage in Blantyre is very poor.”

The aid organisation has suspended its outreach programs to protect its staff against flash floods and landslides but is supporting cyclone relief efforts at a local hospital.

A regional cyclone monitoring centre on the island of Réunion projects that Freddy will move back out to sea by late Wednesday afternoon. It’s unclear whether the cyclone — now set to be the longest ever — will then dissipate or move away from land after that.

“Even rich countries that are advanced democracies would have been no match for the level of destruction this cyclone has brought,” said Kim Yi Dionne, a political scientist at the University of California Riverside. Freddy has accumulated more energy over its journey across the Indian Ocean than an entire United States hurricane season.

Yi Dionne said that the scale of destruction comes despite Malawi’s disaster agency having prepared and planned “for the challenges that come with our contemporary climate crisis.”

Scientists say climate change caused by mostly industrialised nations pumping greenhouse gases into the air has worsened cyclone activity, making them more intense and more frequent. The recently-ended La Nina that impacts weather worldwide also increased cyclone activity in the region.

African nations, who only contribute about four per cent of planet-warming emissions, are “once again paying the steepest price to climate change, including their own lives,” said Lynn Chiripamberi, who leads Oxfam’s southern Africa humanitarian program.

Cyclone Freddy has been causing destruction in southern Africa since late February. It pummelling Mozambique as well as the islands of Madagascar and Réunion last month as it traversed the Indian Ocean.

Freddy first developed near Australia in early February. The United Nations’ weather agency has convened an expert panel to determine whether it has broken the record for the longest-ever cyclone in recorded history, which was set by 31-day Hurricane John in 1994.