Gales and downpours generated by the tropical storm Meari have caused floods in 17 counties of three provinces on the east coast since Saturday and left 164,000 people affected, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said Monday.

As of 3 p.m. Monday, the floods that the northeastward-moving Meari caused in the provinces of Liaoning, Zhejiang and Shandong starting from Saturday have forced the evacuation of 7,500 people, affected 33,000 hectares of farmland and destroyed 400 houses, the ministry said in a statement.

The disaster has resulted in direct economic losses of nearly 200 million yuan (around 30.89 million U.S. dollars) for the three provinces, it added.

The ministry urged local authorities to closely monitor the tropical storm and work harder on disaster information reporting and disaster relief.

The country's meteorological authority forecast on Monday that the provinces of Shandong and Liaoning will get a break from the torrential rains over the next 24 hours as Meari heads for the Korean Peninsula.