Australian authorities scramble to contain COVID-19 spread with over 60 cases reported

Australian authorities were gearing up for a much larger spread of COVID-19 on Friday as over 60 cases reported nationwide, and local health officials expressed that containment would be difficult.

Cases in the worst affected State of NSW rose to 26, including a high school student and a worker at an aged care facility where earlier in the week five others tested positive for COVID-19, including a 95-year-old woman who passed away from the disease.

"This is the first example we believe in Australia where a student within a school environment has been impacted," NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

Berejiklian urged the public to remain calm while taking the precautionary measures advised such as regularly washing hands, and to think about others in the community in helping to prevent the spread of the disease.

"I have full confidence that our health system is doing everything we can to reduce the spread of this virus," she said.

Instances of COVID-19 in other states have appeared more slowly, with 13 in Queensland, 10 in Victoria, seven in South Australia, including an infant, three in Western Australia and one in both Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

NSW remains the only state to have recorded person-to-person transmissions of the disease with the majority of Australia's cases still from overseas travelers who later became ill.

The high school in Sydney where the infected student attended was closed on Friday, as a precautionary measure in order to ease concerns of parents and students.

Health authorities traced the boy's contact with the disease through his mother, who works at a Sydney hospital, to a 53-year-old male who also works at the hospital and tested positive for the disease earlier in the week.

However, the connection is unproven and health authorities said the student may have come in contact with the disease through other means.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the federal government would shoulder half the financial burden of the virus imposed on states -- which estimates suggest could be over 1 billion Australian dollars (660 million U.S. dollars).

On Thursday the federal government introduced a travel ban on arrivals from South Korea, as well as extending a ban on those coming from China and Iran, a decision which Morrison expressed as regrettable but necessary considering the circumstances.

Australia's national carrier QANTAS, further reduced flights to Japan, China's Hong Kong and New Zealand on Friday.

(CGTN)