Beijing’s purge of officials in Hubei province picked up pace with the removal of the top Communist Party leaders in the region as the central government responded to public anger over what is seen as the botched handling of the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that Hubei party secretary Jiang Chaoliang had been replaced by Shanghai mayor Ying Yong, 61, a close ally of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Communist Party leader of the city of Wuhan, Ma Guoqiang, 56, also lost his job, Xinhua said. He will be replaced by Wang Zhonglin, 57, the party secretary of the city of Jinan, in the eastern province of Shandong.

Another Beijing heavyweight, Chen Yixin, was flown into Hubei last week. He is chief of the party’s top law enforcement body – the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission – and is now in charge of handling the outbreak. The virus is believed to have originated from a live animal and seafood market in Wuhan, Hubei’s capital city.

News of the reshuffle coincided with a State Council meeting on Thursday in which it was announced the draconian control measures currently in place in Wuhan – the epicentre of the outbreak – would be expanded to other Hubei cities including Huanggang and Xiaogan.

“Hubei province and Wuhan must further strengthened management and control over exits from the areas … to put a stop to the spread [of the disease],” state broadcaster CCTV quoted a read out of the meeting as saying.

Jiang, 61, is the highest-ranking political casualty so far in the outbreak, which has killed more than 1,300 people in mainland China, the vast majority in Hubei and its capital, Wuhan. As details have trickled out on how local officials mismanaged the outbreak, public anger has swelled on social media.

Academics also signed a public petition to demand free speech after the police punished doctors who raised the early alarm about the disease.

The new appointments could help mend ties with the public, but it remained to be seen whether the newcomers could end the crisis soon, said Qin Qianhong, a law professor at Wuhan University.

“They could help calm public anger over the incompetence of local officials, but there’s too much still unknown with the virus and how bad the situation really is,” Qin said.

“They also need to take into account the fatigue and stress their colleagues have been under in the past month. Most of those people might not have made any mistakes but were simply caught in the storm.”

Qin also said that all three officials sent to Hubei shared a background in security and law enforcement.

New Hubei party chief Ying has a law degree from China University of Political Science and Law, and held a series of senior party posts in Zhejiang province, neighbouring Shanghai, between 2003 and 2007.

His time there overlapped with that of Xi, who served as Zhejiang party chief for five years until 2007, and was when the two men formed their close ties.

Wang, the incoming Wuhan party chief, also has a background in law. The Shandong native majored in criminal law while studying at the East China University of Political Science and Law in the 1980s. He has spent most of his career in Shandong, steadily rising through the party ranks.

“I think it’s a coincidence that they all share similar backgrounds,” he said. “But we can almost expect lots of legal petitions and even risks of protests in the aftermath [of the outbreak], and their legal backgrounds

could help lower those risks.”

“Sending Ying Yong and Wang Zhonglin to Hubei shows the central government is determined to fix Hubei and give people an answer. The cadres there have been really disappointing,” said a person familiar with the developments in the province who was not authorised to speak publicly on the matter.

“The outbreak cost the party dearly. Those who are responsible will be held accountable.”

The decisions to remove senior Communist Party officials echoes what happened in China 17 years ago during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak.

The health minister and the mayor of Beijing were both fired in April 2003 amid allegations of a cover-up in reporting the extent of the disease.