A two-month-old boy has become the youngest person in Australia to contract the coronavirus.

The baby and a seven-year-old girl are the first Australian Covid-19 patients under the age of 10 years old.

It comes as New South Wales is faced with more than 1,000 infections of the virus.

Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said there has been a rise of 211 cases in the past 24 hours in New South Wales.

“We have got two children that are under the age of 10 years have been confirmed on 24 March (Tuesday),” Dr Chant said.

“A two-month-old boy who was tested following close contact with a confirmed adult case and has had minimal symptoms and he’s isolated at home.

“In a separate unrelated case, we have a seven-year-old girl who was tested following close contact with a confirmed adult case and, again, has minimal symptoms and isolated at home.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has further restricted social gatherings, banning weddings of five or more people, funerals of 10 or more and personal training sessions of 10 or more.

The measures are aimed at stemming the further spread of coronavirus across the country.

Several states and territories, including Tasmania, Queensland, the NT, South Australia and Western Australia have introduced measures to lock down their borders.

Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant says around half of New South Wales cases have come from overseas.

She added: “We have a large number of cases under investigation – 279 – but we work incredibly hard in the morning to get that resolved by the afternoon so we have a true picture of the disease transmission in the community which is really the key element that we’re trying to understand.”

Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she understands the panic related to the virus, but ensures authorities are doing all they can to stop its spread.

“Even though we have had over 1000 cases now, the number of people hospitalised out of those 1,000 cases is still relatively small and that’s how we want to keep it,” Ms Berejiklian said.

There are a little less than 2,200 cases across Australia.

Globally, there have been 417,000 cases of Covid-19, with more than 18,600 deaths and 108,000 recoveries.