Further more drama was added to the Chinese crisis as a five-storey hotel being used for corona virus quarantine collapsed yesterday in the southeast Chinese port city of Quanzhou on Saturday, trapping about 70 people.
Quanzhou is a port city on the Taiwan Strait in the province of Fujian with a population of more than 8 million.
State media quoted Quanzhou municipality statement that the hotel collapsed at about 7:30 p.m. (1130 GMT) and 34 people were rescued in the following two hours.
A video stream posted by the government-backed Beijing News site showed rescue workers in orange overalls clambering over the rubble of the Quanzhou Xinjia Hotel and carrying people towards ambulances.
According to state media outlet People's Daily, by this dawn, 47 inpiduals had been rescued.
"I was at a gas station and heard a loud noise. I looked up and the whole building collapsed. Dust was everywhere, and glass fragments were flying around," a witness said in a video posted on the Miaopai streaming app.
"I was so terrified that my hands and legs were shivering."
A woman named only by her surname, Chen, told the Beijing News website that relatives including her sister had been under quarantine at the hotel as prescribed by local regulations after returning from Hubei province, where the coronavirus emerged.
She said they had been scheduled to leave soon after completing their 14 days of isolation.
"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."
On another hand, China continues for the second day to report lesser new confirmed cases, as official data just showed the new toll fell by roughly one half and the the disease continues to subside in its country of origin.
This morning, the National Health Commission (NHC) reported 44 new confirmed cases of the COVID-19 corona virus as at the end of March 7, a decline from 99 the previous day.
The fall comes as Chinese cities gradually relax quarantine measures put in place over a month ago, while authorities keep a close watch on the virus' spread overseas.
Of the 44 new confirmed cases, 41 were discovered in Wuhan, the origin of the virus' outbreak and its hotbed. And all the new deaths occurred in Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak.
The new cases took the total number of confirmed cases in China to 80,695 and the total number of deaths to 3,097.
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