COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says it's still "too early to tell" if Wellington will move up alert levels or go into lockdown after an infected person from Australia visited the city over the weekend.
The case from New South Wales arrived in the capital in the early hours of Saturday morning before flying back on Monday morning. There are 14 locations of interest related to their visit.
But Hipkins says despite the visit - which included outings to a popular central Wellington pub and a busy exhibition at Te Papa - the case only poses a "low risk" to New Zealand.
"At this point while the risk remains low, having had somebody with COVID in Wellington for a 48-hour period does create some additional risk - so the work really at this point is making sure we understand the true extent of that," he told media from Parliament.
"It's low-risk but not no risk. The person was vaccinated, the pub was a higher-density setting and the exhibition at Te Papa, which I understand was busy, obviously creates an additional element of risk. So we're just scoping exactly what the level of risk was.
"My understanding is the person first started to show symptoms on Monday morning and left New Zealand not long after that. There will be some potential exposure points on the way to the airport, but they were on a mid-morning flight which suggests there wouldn't be a huge amount of exposure there."
Hipkins says at this stage, it's too early to tell whether an escalation of Wellington's alert levels or a lockdown is the correct approach to take.
But he noted that the case and their contacts were diligent about scanning in on their visit, which he hoped would help contact tracers identify exposures quickly.
"My understanding is that scanning rates for them were very high," he said.
"The Australian visitors were using the app very regularly in the locations they were in. That's good news, that helps us. If New Zealanders have scanned into those locations they'll be notified.
"When we don't have a lot of exposure to COVID or discussion of COVID in the community, then we do see a greater degree of complacency. This will be a good reminder to all New Zealanders that scanning matters.
A public health alert about the case came on Tuesday night, just hours after the New Zealand Government paused the quarantine-free travel bubble with New South Wales as the state's outbreak grows.
Ten new community cases of COVID-19 were announced on Tuesday in NSW, taking the Australian state's recent community cases linked to the cluster to 21.
The pause came into force from 11:59pm on Tuesday and will be in place for 72 hours initially. This decision will be reviewed on Thursday.
