Safety can't take a backseat for quarantine

A hotel in Quanzhou, East China's Fujian province, collapsed on Saturday night, leaving 11 people dead, 38 injured and 21 still missing as of Monday.

The hotel owner has been arrested and the cause of the accident is under investigation.

The use of the hotel for quarantining suspected novel coronavirus cases raises questions about the local government's safety considerations given that the hotel's safety record was not above suspicion.

According to a Beijing News report, the weight of the hotel's six floors rested on steel pipes. And during renovation work, stress fractures had prompted some who had been staying there to leave.

Also, between November 2018 and last week, local public security authorities had twice punished the hotel's management for "not making accommodation registration in accordance with the regulations".

On July 17, 2019, the local administrative department had added the hotel to the list of "businesses operating abnormally".

Given this background, why did the local government authorities choose the hotel for quarantining people?

Ensuring safety should be any government's primary concern when making public service decisions.

A team has been set up to investigate the accident and the authorities have asked to find out who is accountable. Whoever is involved should be punished.

Local governments in the rest of the country must draw lessons from the incident.

- BEIJING NEWS