About 30 people remained trapped early on Sunday after a five-story hotel being used for coronavirus quarantine collapsed in the southeast Chinese port city of Quanzhou, state media said.
About four hours after the collapse, the Quanzhou municipality said 38 of the 70 or so people who had been in the Quanzhou Xinjia Hotel had been rescued.
A video stream posted by the government-backed Beijing News site showed rescue workers in orange overalls clambering over rubble and twisted steelwork carrying people towards ambulances.
The hotel collapsed at about 7:30 p.m. (1130 GMT) on Saturday evening.
Anger has been building up against the authorities in China over their early handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 3,300 people globally, most of them in China.