China has fired two senior officials in Hubei, the highest-ranking yet to be sacked, as Beijing asserts its control after the deadly coronavirus outbreak – with local officials appearing to be bearing the blame.

State media said that Zhang Jin, the Communist party chief of the health commission in hardest-hit Hubei province, and Liu Yingzi, its director, were both fired. They will be replaced by a national-level official, Wang Hesheng, the deputy director of China’s national health commission.

The sackings come days after a wave of public anger aimed at the government after the death of a Wuhan doctor who was punished for trying to warn friends and colleagues about the new virus. Li Wenliang, who succumbed to the virus last week, has become a martyr for many and a lightning rod for criticism of the Chinese state’s instinct to suppress information.

Chinese authorities appear to be ramping up a campaign of punishing local officials for the epidemic, which has now claimed more than 1,000 lives.

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Earlier this month, 337 officials in Hubei were “penalised”, including six officials who were fired for “dereliction of duty”. Officials from the Red Cross society in Hubei were also removed. A team from China’s anti-corruption agency, the national supervisory commission, has been sent to Hubei to investigate Li’s death.

Focusing on the wrongdoing of local authorities, more often the target of public anger than central officials, also helps deflect criticism from the country’s top leaders, including Xi Jinping.

Xi’s disappearance from public view for several weeks had prompted derision online following his pledges in January that he was “personally” overseeing the government’s response. But on Tuesday, photos of Xi visiting a neighbourhood and hospital in Beijing where he held a video call with health workers in Wuhan filled the front page of the official People’s Daily. Xi promised the country would win the “people’s war” against the virus.

The national health commission on Tuesday reported 108 new deaths from the virus, bringing the total number to 1,016. Officials reported 2,478 new cases of infection on Monday, down from 3,062 the day before, prompting some optimism that measures to contain the virus may be working after more than 40,000 people in China have been infected.

Zhong Nanshan, an epidemiologist and top adviser, said in an interview with Reuters that the outbreak may peak in mid to late February before reaching a plateau and eventually easing. Zhong said that in some provinces, the number of new cases had already declined.

Speaking at the beginning of a two-day World Health Organization meeting in Geneva, the WHO director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the outbreak still posed a serious threat globally.

“With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world,” he said.

Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University and a leading epidemiologist who worked extensively on Sars, told the Guardian the virus could spread to about two-thirds of the world’s population if it were not controlled.

There have been more than 300 cases in 24 other countries and territories as well as two deaths outside of mainland China: one in Hong Kong and another in the Philippines.

In Hong Kong, dozens of residents were evacuated from an apartment building on Tuesday after a 62-year-old woman living 10 floors above another resident, previously diagnosed, was found to have the virus.

On Tuesday, Taiwan, which has already blocked visitors from China, Hong Kong and Macau, issued a travel warning advising citizens not to visit Hong Kong or Macau. Vietnam and Thailand each confirmed another case of the virus.

Thailand, which has now recorded 33 cases of the coronavirus, on Tuesday blocked the entry of a Holland America cruise ship that has been turned away by several countries since it departed from Hong Kong earlier this month with more than 2,200 passengers.