(Bloomberg) -- The City of Costa Mesa sued to stop the U.S. government from relocating as many as 50 people diagnosed with the Coronavirus to a “dilapidated” complex surrounded by residential neighborhoods about 40 miles south of Los Angeles.

The city asked a federal judge Friday to temporarily block the planned move of the patients from Travis Air Force Base in Northern California to the Fairview Development Center until all necessary steps have been taken to protect public safety.

The Fairview site wasn’t intended to house people infected with a highly contagious and deadly disease, the city said in their request filed in federal court in Santa Ana. The site was recently deemed unsuitable for use as an emergency shelter because it would require two years and $25 million to make it properly habitable, according to the city.

“Fairview is an inappropriate location for a quarantine, as there is no way to restrict access to or from the facility; it is in some places about two hundred yards from residential neighborhoods, and there are no security measures in place to keep the quarantined individuals isolated from each other and from the residents of Costa Mesa, a city of over 113,000 people,” the city said.

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit after regular business hours.

The city asked that no relocation takes place until there has been complete survey to determine if the site can be used to quarantine the patients and until there are adequate medical and security resources in place to enforce a quarantine.

To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider

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