Two senior Hubei provincial health commission officials, Zhang Jin and Liu Yingzi, were removed from their posts.

Zhang Jin was Party secretary of the Health Commission of Hubei Province while Liu Yingzi served as the director of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission.

The two posts will be taken over by Wang Hesheng, a newly appointed Standing Committee member of the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee, who's also the deputy head of the National Health Commission.

Hubei, a province of more than 59 million people in central China, is the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak.