NSW and Victoria both record nine COVID-19 deaths as cases stabilise

NSW and Victoria have each recorded nine COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours as daily cases for both states stabilise.

Overnight, NSW recorded 13,179 new cases while Victoria recorded 7091 new cases.

NSW is currently treating 1038 people in hospital with the virus while Victoria has 196 hospitalisations.

Both states detected a majority of positive cases via self-reported results of rapid antigen tests.

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Study links COVID-19 cases to changes in the brain

People who have even a mild case of COVID-19 may have accelerated aging of the brain and other changes to it, according to a new study.

The study, published this week in the journal Nature, is believed to be the largest of its kind.

It found that the brains of those who had COVID-19 had a greater loss of grey matter and abnormalities in the brain tissue compared with those who didn't have COVID-19.

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Many of those changes were in the area of the brain related to the sense of smell.

"We were quite surprised to see clear differences in the brain even with mild infection," lead author Gwenaëlle Douaud, an associate professor of neurosciences at the University of Oxford, said.

Associate Professor Douaud and her colleagues evaluated brain imaging from 401 people who had COVID-19 between March 2020 and April 2021, both before infection and an average of four and a half months after infection.

Additional reporting by CNN