Saturday, March 7, 2020

Hotel holding quarantined patients from the Coronavirus outbreak collapses in China.

Rescue workers at the hotel. BBC/EPA.

A hotel in Quanzhou, China which was being used to contain people that had contact with Coronavirus victims has collapsed, trapping 70 people. BBC. It is unclear why the building collapsed or if anyone has died. At least 40 people have been rescued from the building. The hotel was opened in 2018 and had a capacity for 80 people and was being used as a quarantine facility for people who had close contact with Coronavirus victims. Fujian province had 296 cases of the virus and is holding 10,819 for observation. 

My Comment:
When it rains it pours. What a strange incident in China. It's bad enough that they have the Coronavirus to deal with but now they have random hotels falling down, that just happen to have Coronavirus detainees in them? Very bad luck.

I do wonder how this hotel collapsed. The BBC article had very little information as to why this happened and I guess it's possible that the Chinese don't know either. It was a very new building though so it wasn't due to wear and tear. My guess is that the design team or the construction crew screwed up and screwed up badly. 

The Coronavirus probably didn't have much of an effect on the rescue effort. The rescue crew would have likely been wearing safety equipment anyways and it looks like they wore facemasks. Given that these people were just the ones that had been exposed to the virus and were not showing any symptoms I think it's likely that they didn't infect anyone. 

Still, what a crazy story in an already busy news cycle. These people had to be quarantined and even then they weren't safe. To have such a random thing happen to people who were already having a very bad time of it is just sad. And though I haven't seen any confirmation of any deaths so far it's still a terrible thing for these people to go through. 

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