Four people have died and another person's life was hanging in the balance on Sunday after a hotel collapsed in the coastal city of Quanzhou in south-eastern China's Fujian province, Chinese state media reported, according to dpa. Xinjia Hotel in Licheng district, which was being used to quarantine people who had come into close contact with the new coronavirus, collapsed at around 7:15 pm on Saturday (1115 GMT), trapping about 70 people, according to a statement from the district government. The Communist Party-run People's Daily reported that in addition to the four deaths, one patient was in critical condition and four others were seriously injured. Nine people escaped the wreckage unaided while 42 were saved by rescue workers, the paper added. A team of experts from nearby cities was dispatched to aid in the rescue effort, China's National Health Commission said in a statement. China reported 44 new cases of the coronavirus and 27 new deaths due to the related Covid-19 respiratory disease, according to the latest statistics released by the National Health Commission on Sunday. Total deaths in China from the outbreak, which began in Hubei's capital Wuhan in December, now stand at 3,097, with more than 80,500 people in mainland China diagnosed with the virus since the outbreak.
