A hotel used as a quarantine center for the coronavirus collapsed Saturday night in the southeastern Chinese city of Quanzhou, with 7 dead and 70 trapped under rubble.

Search efforts are ongoing, as 49 people have been rescued from the collapsed hotel and 28 remain unaccounted for, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management, CNN reported.

More than 1,000 firefighters and emergency responders worked through the night to located survivors of the accident.

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"We are using life detection instruments to monitor signs of life and professional breaking-in tools to make forcible entries. We are trying our utmost to save trapped people," said Guo Yutuan, squadron leader of the Quanzhou armed police detachment's mobile unit.

Witnesses of the collapse said they heard a loud bang and thought it was an explosion, before noticing the six-story hotel building near them collapsed, according to Hong Kong's public broadcaster RTHK, The Guardian reported.

The owner of the now-collapsed building is in police custody according to Xinhua, a state news agency, CNN reported.

The hotel was a seven-story steel building, made in 2013 and converted to a hotel in 2018. The owner started work on renovating the first floor in January.

Workers at the hotel contacted the owner around 7 p.m. local time on Saturday reporting a pillar had become distorted during construction. The building collapsed a few minutes later. Investigations are underway to determine if the cause of the collapse was due to structural problems or recent renovations.

The incident happened in Quanzhou, a city nearly 600 miles from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China.

China reported 99 new cases of the virus on Saturday, the first daily increase of less than 100 since January 20, according to The Guardian's report.

The country reported new deaths from the disease, raising Mainland China's death toll to 3,070.