Fuat Kabakci
07 March 2020•Update: 08 March 2020
BEIJING
A five-floor hotel being used as a quarantine facility for coronavirus patients collapsed on Saturday in Quanzhou city, Fujian province in southeastern China.
The daily South China Morning Post reported the reason for the incident to be yet unknown and that 70 people were currently trapped inside the building.
Witnesses of the event said they heard an explosion.
Search and rescue teams have so far rescued 28 people from under the rubble, but rescue efforts continue.
Particularly in the COVID-19 epicenter of Hubei province, some buildings in China are temporarily being used to house patients of the disease due to lack of medical facilities.
The Chinese National Health Commission announced that 3,072 people have died due to COVID-19 so far and that the number of confirmed case exceed 80,000 in China.
First detected in Wuhan, China in December, the disease is now present in over 80 countries worldwide.
The global death toll is nearing 3,500, with around 100,000 confirmed cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
It has since spread to over 80 countries and the Who, which declared the outbreak an international health emergency, recently updated its global risk assessment to "very high."
*Writing by Davut Demircan
