The number of confirmed cases of the COVID-19 in Australia has increased over 25 percent in under 18 hours, and Health Minister Greg Hunt dismissed calls for Australia to declare a lockout.
According to the Department of Heath there were 375 confirmed cases as of 6 a.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT) on Tuesday, compared to 298 at 1 p.m. AEDT on Monday, an increase of 25.8 percent.
Slightly more than half the national cases -- 189 -- were acquired overseas, mostly in the United States, Iran, Italy and Britain.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is set to meet with his ministers and state and territory leaders on Tuesday evening to discuss escalating the national response to the virus.
Ahead of the meeting, Hunt dismissed calls for Australia to declare a lockout similar to that being enforced in Italy.
"One of the things we're looking at and balancing, and I think it is very important to explain to this Australians, is to make sure that, as we help stop the spread through our individual actions as well as our government decisions and our collective actions," he told reporters.
"We are not making the problem worse by destroying the capacity for our health workers, our medical workers, of having an impact on supplies of food and other things."
With Parliament set to resume on March 23, Morrison and Anthony Albanese, the leader of the Opposition Labor Party, on Tuesday agreed that only limited numbers of Members of Parliament (MPs) would return.
Under the agreement only 90 MPs will sit in the House of Representatives, the lower house of Parliament, instead of the usual 150 in an attempt to mitigate the spread of the virus.
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