China: The Xinjia Hotel, where the isolation of contact with Covid-19 patient in Fujian province, collapsed tonight, leaving about 70 people trapped.

Quanzhou city officials in Fujian province, southeast China, said the five-star Xinjia hotel in Licheng district collapsed at 19:30 (18:30 Hanoi time), causing many cars on the road to be crushed. The 80-room hotel has recently been transformed into an isolation facility for close contacts of nCoV-infected patients. By 23h, 35 people were rescued.

Xinjia Hotel is one of two quarantine points in Lich Thanh district. Lich Thanh district officials said there were about 70 people in the building at the time of the incident. A man living near the scene said it was possible an explosion had occurred.

"I just had dinner and suddenly heard a loud bang. I thought it was an explosion. When I ran to the balcony I saw the entire hotel had collapsed," the witness said.

Videos posted by Chinese state media show rescuers working at the scene of the wreckage. More than 147 firefighters and 26 vehicles were dispatched to the scene.

The Emergency Management Department has sent a team to the scene. Huang Ming, the party secretary of the Ministry of Emergency Management, is overseeing rescue missions from Beijing.

Senior State Council officials are also on their way to Quanzhou. The hotel had an incident that was inaugurated in June 2018.

A woman surnamed Chen said her relatives, including her sister, were being quarantined at the Xinjia Hotel according to local regulations after returning from Hubei, the Covid-19 epidemic. The group arrived at the hotel on February 25 and are expected to leave shortly after the 14-day isolation period has expired.

"I couldn't contact them, they didn't answer the phone," she said. "I was also quarantined at another hotel and I was very worried, I didn't know what to do. They were healthy, they were checked on their bodies every day and the test results showed everything was normal."

Covid-19 has appeared in 98 countries and territories, causing nearly 104,000 people to be infected, more than 3,500 deaths. China is the largest outbreak in the world, with the majority of cases and deaths. However, the disease situation in China has been developing positively in recent times.

Fujian provincial government said as of March 6, the whole province had 296 nCoV infections and 10,819 people were monitored after close contact with patients.