Hotel Holding Coronavirus Sufferers Collapses

A hotel in China that was being used to quarantine people with coronavirus has collapsed, the BBC reports. Officials say roughly 35 people have been rescued from the rubble, leaving as many stuck inside. Tweeted video footage shows rescue workers laboring amid dust and dim lighting to find more people. USA Today notes that no reason was given for the collapse of the Xinjia Express Hotel in Quanzhou, which occurred just after 7pm local time. A man who lives across the street says he was having dinner when he heard what sounded like an explosion, and ran to the balcony to see the whole building crumble.

One woman says her relatives, including a sister, were under quarantine at the Xinjia Express. "I can't contact them, they're not answering their phones," she said. "I'm under quarantine too [at another hotel] and I'm very worried, I don't know what to do. They were healthy, they took their temperatures every day, and the tests showed that everything was normal." City officials had converted the hotel's 80 rooms to a quarantine facility after the new virus cropped up in December. Quanzhou is in the province of Fujian, which had 296 coronavirus cases as of Friday. Some 101,000 people are said to have contracted the virus worldwide. (More coronavirus stories.)