The peak body for small businesses has backed a proposal to lower the isolation requirements for people who have tested positive for COVID.

Wednesday’s national cabinet meeting between the prime minister and state and territory leaders is set to bring up isolation requirements, with the potential for it to be lowered from seven days to five days.

While the agenda for the meeting has not been released, calls have been growing for the isolation period to be reduced following a drop in cases.

Council of Small Businesses Australia chief executive Alexi Boyd said a reduction to five days would help alleviate worker shortages, which have been exacerbated by the virus.

“It’s important that we move with the times with COVID,” she told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

“There needs to be continual discussions around what is best for both the economy and for keeping people safe and healthy and also reducing the impact on the healthcare system.”

Ms Boyd said she would leave the time frame about what the isolation period should be to health experts.

“Small businesses have followed the advice of healthcare professionals since the beginning and done what they can and will continue to do that,” she said.

Labor MP Patrick Gorman said there would be a discussion about a lowering of the isolation period if there was a co-ordinated move between federal, state and territory governments.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the leaders … these conversations will happen over the coming weeks,” the assistant minister to the prime minister told Sky News.

“It was put forward a few weeks ago and people felt that wasn’t the right thing to do at that point in time. That may change at some point in the future.”

Meanwhile, a study suggests school-aged children are just as good at doing their own rapid COVID-19 tests as adults.

Research from the Emory University School of Medicine in the United States tested the ability of children and teenagers aged four to 14 to do their own nasal swabs.

It found self-collected positive nasal swabs from 197 symptomatic children agreed with results from healthcare worker-collected swabs in 97.8 per cent of participants.

The study also shows the children’s own negative swabs agreed with healthcare worker-collected swabs in 98.1 per cent of participants.

Younger children struggled the most, with 13 of the 24 participants aged four to five having “significant” difficulties doing their own tests.

Children eight or older were more likely to correctly self-perform the rapid tests.

LATEST 24-HOUR COVID-19 DATA:

• ACT: 148 cases, no deaths, 106 in hospital with two in ICU
• NSW: 3394 cases, four deaths, 1879 in hospital with 47 in ICU
• Victoria: 2147 cases, four deaths, 343 in hospital with 22 in ICU
• Queensland: 1233 cases, no deaths, 283 in hospital with 10 in ICU
• Tasmania: 168 cases, no deaths, 32 in hospital with one in ICU