Story By: Lee Bullen,Sub Editor: Joseph Golder,Agency: Asia Wire Report

AsiaWire

This is the moment a young Chinese boy is pulled from the rubble of a collapsed coronavirus quarantine hotel where 10 people have died and 22 others are still missing.

The six-storey Xinjia Hotel, in the city of Quanzhou in East China’s Fujian Province, collapsed at just past 7pm local time on 7th March with 80 people inside.

Only nine managed to escape on their own, the authorities said.

One of two quarantine centres in the area, the hotel reportedly housed 58 confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients, as well as 22 staff members.

As of 8:15am local time today (9th March), 49 people had been found, but 10 of them were subsequently declared dead while at least 22 others are still unaccounted for.

Among the survivors was a young boy.

Footage shows uniformed firefighters carrying him out of the rubble of the collapsed hotel before covering his eyes, nose and mouth with a surgical mask and a single glove.

According to reports, both the boy’s parents survived the collapse.

Local authorities are reportedly investigating the 65-year-old owner of the hotel, named only as Mr Yang.

Zhang Yi, the director of Licheng District’s housing bureau, reported that the ground floor of Xinjia Hotel was undergoing renovations at the time of the collapse.

Mr Yang received a call from his workers saying a column had become misshapen just “three to four minutes” before the collapse, the director said.

The cause of the collapse was still being investigated at the time of writing.

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