Australia has begun opening beaches and allowing home visits as it starts to ease its lockdown following a decline in new coronavirus cases.

Officials in New South Wales (NSW), the country’s most populous state, said some restrictions on movement would be relaxed, with the hope that widespread medical testing can help to sustain the decline in Covid-19 cases. The state has reported nearly half of Australia's total cases.

Bondi Beach and two neighbouring beaches in Sydney were reopened to local residents on Tuesday after being closed a month ago due to concerns over social distancing.

Officials said they will allow up to two adults to visit another person’s home from Friday in a relaxation of the country’s stay-at-home policy and ban on non-essential movement.

Gladys Berejiklian, the NSW premier, acknowledged that many people had been “isolated” in their homes due to the ban on non-essential activities during the lockdown.

The announcement came as Australia recorded just one new case of Covid-19 from an unknown source in the past 24 hours, suggesting the country’s outbreak was coming under control.

“We are winning but we have not won yet,” Greg Hunt, Australia’s health minister, said.

Mr Hunt told reporters on Tuesday that 2.4 million people (about 10 per cent of the population) had downloaded and registered for the government’s contact tracing app, which uses a Bluetooth wireless signal to exchange a “digital handshake” with another user when they come within 1.5 metres.

The app then logs this contact and encrypts it, with users notified if they have had more than 15 minutes of close contact with another user who tests positive for the virus.

However, the government has said it needs about 40 per cent of the population to download and use the app for it to have maximum effectiveness.

Australia has confirmed 6,727 cases of coronavirus, with 85 deaths, as of Tuesday, according to the health minister.

The country has avoided the high numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths seen in other countries by imposing an early shutdown of businesses and strict social distancing rules.

States have been able to relax some restrictions now as the local rate of new infections has slowed to barely 1 per cent per day, compared to 25 per cent a month ago.

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