Ten dead after coronavirus quarantine hotel collapses in Chinese city
● Twenty-three people still missing in Quanzhou as police summon owner
At least ten people were killed in the collapse of a Chinese hotel that was being used to isolate people who had arrived from other parts of China hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
The collapse of the building in the south-east city of Quanzhou on Saturday evening trapped 71 people, the ministry of emergency management said.
The ministry said that 38 had been rescued and 23 were still missing. Most of the rescued were taken to hospitals for treatment, some with serious injuries
The cause of the collapse was under investigation and the owner of the building was put under police control, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
State media said the hotel was being used as a quarantine centre monitoring people who had had close contact with coronavirus patients. It was reported that 58 of the 71 people in the building were under quarantine.
Two shops on the first floor of the seven-storey building were being revamped and a pillar failed a few minutes before the collapse, Xinhua said, quoting a housing and development official. Police have summoned the building’s owner.
Built in 2013, the building was later converted to a 66-room hotel that opened in
June 2018, Quanzhou authorities said. The coastal city is in Fujian province, across the Taiwan Strait from the island of Taiwan.
The city of Quanzhou has recorded 47 cases of the virus, which first emerged in the city of Wuhan, about 650 miles away.
The city said that 58 people from epidemic-hit areas were staying at the Xinjia Hotel for medical observation. All had tested negative for the virus.
Most Chinese cities are isolating people coming from Hubei province, where the disease is most widespread, for 14 days.
Hotel workers and employeesofacarshopinthebuilding were also inside at the time of the collapse.
More than 1,000 firefighters and seven rescue dogs were sent to the site, according to the ministry of emergency management. Photographs showed rescue workers with lights bringing out people, some bloodied by the collapse. Rubble could be seen on cars in front of the building.
China, where the virus first emerged in December, has confirmed more than 80,000 cases, about 75 percent of the global total. More than 3,000 people have died in China. Most of the cases have been in Wuhan, an inland city in Hubei province about 475 miles north-west of Quanzhou.