10 killed as hotel used as quarantine facility collapses in China

Beijing: At least ten people were killed in the collapse of a hotel used as a coronavirus quarantine facility in eastern China, authorities said Sunday.

Rescuers pulled 48 people from the rubble, of whom 38 are still alive, the Ministry of Emergency Management said on social media.

The coastal city of Quanzhou has recorded 47 cases of the COVID-19 infection and the hotel had been repurposed to house people who had been in recent contact with confirmed patients, the People's Daily state newspaper reported.

Video posted by the firefighting department showed rescuers putting a surgical mask on children as they were pulled from the rubble of the six-storey building

The hotel was used to quarantine and observe people who had come to the province during the novel coronavirus prevention and control and had come in contact with the virus patients.

The accident happened on Saturday night during a house modification operation and the owner of the building is currently under police control, it said.

The Xinjia hotel was in operation since 2018 and had 80 rooms.

Among the rescued, a two-year-old boy and his parents were pulled out from the rubble and sent to hospital for treatment, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

City's fire department has sent more than 200 fire fighters to the site, while the province dispatched 11 search and rescue teams with over 800 fire fighters and seven rescue dogs, the report said.

The novel virus originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year and has claimed over 3,000 lives in the country.

Apart from China, over 3,400 people have died of the deadly disease and over 101,000 have been infected from the virus globally.