Schools around Australia may be closed to try andcontain the outbreak of swine flu, as Australia's number of confirmedcases rises to 13.
The number of confirmed cases in Australia has risen to 13 with aneight-year-old boy from Melbourne's west the latest case to beconfirmed.
Earlier it was confirmed an Adelaide woman caught the virus from herteenage daughter. A boy from the same family is also suspected ofhaving swine flu.
The alert level has been lifted from 'delay' to 'contain', givingauthorities in all states the option to close schools if students areat risk.
Schools in Victoria and South Australia have already been closed because of outbreaks.
But the Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon says the virus does not appear to be as dangerous as first thought.
"We hope that we are dealing with a swine flu that is having a much milder impact," she said.
"This phase deals with information collection ... detecting thecases and the contact tracing that we continue to do, distributing moreinformation and continuing with the border measures."
She says at this stage there is no risk to large gatherings.
"It's really in the next phase that the cancellation of massgatherings or the rescheduling of public transport would be likely tooccur," she said.
Health officials are awaiting test results on around 20 suspected cases of swine flu.
