Australia will start relaxing travel bans for some high school students from China but not university students.

The federal government says a decision on university students could be in a week.

Year 11 and 12 students – other than those from the Hubei province at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak – will be allowed to enter.

The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, said this the Covid-19 virus was in Australia – and infection rates in China are falling – and medical advice was that the Australian border force continues to provide case-by-case exemptions to the travel ban from mainland China.

“In particular that should include consideration of year 11 and 12 secondary school students from mainland China, excluding Hubei,” he said in Melbourne on Saturday.

There are about 400 year 12 students and 360 year 11 students enrolled in Australian schools who have not been able to enter the country.

They students can now apply for an exemption to the travel restrictions applied to foreign nationals who have been in mainland China.

Austalia’s chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, was confident that allowing a small number of additional people from mainland China would not impose any material risk to the Australian population.

“We are already letting in Australian citizens and permanent residents, and the good news in the last few weeks from mainland China has been there have been very very few exported cases of this disease,” he said.

The federal education minister. Dan Tehan, said: “It is incredibly important that we get some normality back to the international student market.

“At this stage we are looking at year 11 and 12 students but the medical advice has said in a week we could look at what would happen with tertiary education students.