Hotel housing quarantine victims of coronavirus in China collapses

The five-storey Xinjia Hotel used as a coronavirus quarantine facility in the Chinese city of Quanzhou has collapsed with at least 70 people trapped, while 35 of them have been pulled from the rubble as at time of filing this report.

Penpushing reports that, it was not yet clear what might have caused the collapse or if anyone has died, but emergency workers were seen combing through the building’s wreckage in the southern province of Fujian.

The source said the incident happened at about 19:30 local time (11:30 GMT) on Saturday, adding that, the hotel reportedly opened in 2018 and had 80 guest rooms, but was being used as a quarantine facility monitoring people who had had close contact with coronavirus patients.

Penpushing further reports that a relative of one of the victims of the collapsed building said her relatives, which, include her sister had been under quarantine in the hotel, lamenting that, “I can’t contact them, they’re not answering their phones,”

The country has so far reported the highest number of suspected, confirmed and deaths since the outbreak of the disease which started from Wuhan in December, while record has it that, as at Friday, Fujian province had 296 cases of coronavirus.

Penpushing also reports that, 10,819 people have been placed under observation because they have been in close contact with someone infected, while the disease has since spread to every continent except Antarctica.

The World Health Organization(WHO) as at the time of this report  confirmed that more than 101,000 people worldwide have now contracted the virus, with  over 3,000 people also confirmed dead  from the virus-