A five-storey hotel being used for coronavirus quarantine has collapsed in the southeast Chinese port city of Quanzhou trapping about 70 people, state media say.

A video stream posted by the government-backed Beijing News site on Saturday showed rescue workers in orange overalls clambering over the rubble of the Quanzhou Xinjia Hotel and carrying people towards ambulances.

The hotel collapsed about 7.30pm local time and 34 people were rescued in the following two hours, the Quanzhou municipality said on its website.

It was unknown whether anyone had died when the building, which reportedly has 80 guest rooms and opened in 2018, crumbled to the ground.

“I was at a petrol station and heard a loud noise. I looked up and the whole building collapsed. Dust was everywhere, and glass fragments were flying around,” a witness said in a video posted on the Miaopai streaming app.

“I was so terrified that my hands and legs were shivering.”

A hotel used to quarantine patients with #coronavirus has collapsed in the Chinese city of Quanzhou, trapping around 70 people.

Read more here: https://t.co/zBEzc70XhM pic.twitter.com/DxrmLssFzN

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 7, 2020

A woman named only by her surname, Chen, told the Beijing News website that relatives including her sister had been under quarantine at the hotel as prescribed by local regulations after returning from Hubei province, where the coronavirus emerged.

She said they had been scheduled to leave soon after completing their 14 days of isolation.

“I can’t contact them, they’re not answering their phones, she said.

“I’m under quarantine too (at another hotel) and I’m very worried, I don’t know what to do. They were healthy, they took their temperatures every day, and the tests showed that everything was normal.”

Around half of the 70 people believed to be in the building when it collapsed have been rescued. Photo: Getty

Quanzhou is a port city on the Taiwan Strait in the province of Fujian with a population of more than 8 million.

The official People’s Daily said the hotel had opened in June 2018 with 80 rooms.

It’s not known why the five-storey hotel crumbled to the ground. Photo: Getty

Beijing News’ video stream was viewed by more than 2 million Weibo users on Saturday evening, and the hotel’s collapse was the top trending topic on the Weibo site, China’s close equivalent to Twitter.

Some users demanded a investigation into how the hotel could have collapsed.

The Fujian provincial government said that as of Friday, the province had 296 cases of coronavirus and 10,819 people had been placed under observation after being classified as suspected close contacts.