Another 72 people have died from COVID-19 across New South Wales and Victoria, while hospitalisations continue to fall.
Victoria recorded 34 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, while NSW reported 38. There were also nine deaths recorded in Queensland, and one in each of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania.
There are currently 2,578 patients with COVID-19 in NSW hospitals, with the number having fallen for the third straight day.
Some 160 people with COVID-19 are in intensive care units, down from 170 on Wednesday.
In Victoria, there are 752 people in hospital — a number that has dropped each day for the past week. The state has 82 people in intensive care - 17 fewer than on Wednesday.
NSW recorded 12,632 new cases of COVID-19, while Victoria reported 12,157 new infections.
The NSW government has warned that cases could rise as children return to school.
Premier Dominic Perrottet has challenged those questioning the return of students to classrooms.
Many students had lost one-quarter of their face-to-face learning during the pandemic, he said on Wednesday.
"We cannot ruin our children's future," he said.
While the school year will have "bumps along the way" it was the "right thing to do".
"We have a duty as a government, we have a duty as a people, to ensure our kids are given better opportunities than we had," he said.
Meanwhile, most Queenslanders who have had COVID-19 don't know they were positive and haven't been tested, a state government study shows.
The survey was revealed as the state recorded another nine virus deaths, including four people in aged care, and 8643 new cases on Thursday.
"There will be families out there grieving today and tonight," Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said on Thursday.
The survey involved health workers visiting random homes on the Gold Coast over consecutive weekends in January, and testing the occupants.
On 22 January, when the virus wave was at its peak in the region, 20 out of 117 people came back positive from PCR tests.
Only four of those 20 were showing symptoms, Chief Health Officer John Gerrard said.
"There were people walking around the Gold Coast who had no idea they have COVID-19 ... hence the importance of masks even when you feel well," he said.
The survey was repeated the following weekend, when 11 out of 143 people tested positive.
Of those, six reported having symptoms.
Dr Gerard said the first-of-its-kind survey was important to gauge the how the pandemic would continue to affect communities on Australian shores.
"This feeds into data that will be collected nationally to try and work out where we are going with this pandemic," he said.
"So we're trying to work out how many, what proportion of the population has actually been infected and what degree of immunity that has created in the community and what will happen in the future in terms of whether there will be further waves in the community."
What's happening elsewhere?
Another Northern Territorian has died from COVID-19, with the death of an unvaccinated resident at a central Australian aged care facility.
The man in his 80s died on Wednesday, bringing the Territory's virus death toll to four, NT Health says.
He was a resident at the virus-ravaged Old Timers Aged Care Service in Alice Springs and had underlying health conditions.
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth has established biosecurity zones in the NT's remote communities to slow the pandemic's spread.
The new measures would prevent anyone entering or leaving the designated zones and were based on advice from Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly, Health Minister Greg Hunt said.
South Australia has reported another 1583 COVID-19 cases and one more death as the number of active infections across the state continues to fall.
Premier Steven Marshall says active cases are down to 18,308, the lowest number for some time.
"What we're now seeing is a settling of the numbers in South Australia," Mr Marshall said on Thursday.
"We're starting to see those numbers plateau a bit. We'd like to see them go lower."
South Australia has 226 people in hospital including 18 in intensive care, with five on ventilation.
Tasmania has recorded an additional COVID-19 death and 656 new infections.
The death, reported on Thursday, takes the state's number of coronavirus fatalities since the beginning of the pandemic to 19.
Tasmania has reported six deaths since reopening to mainland hotspots in mid-December.
There are seven people receiving treatment for COVID-19 in hospital, with two of them in intensive care.
Six positive cases are in hospital for unrelated medical conditions, the state's health department says.
It is the third day in a row the number of new cases has been in the 600s, after 504 were documented on Monday.
There are 3,782 known active cases statewide, continuing a downward trend over several weeks.
Tasmanian public school students, meanwhile, will return to the classroom on 9 February.
With additional reporting by AAP.
