A superspreading Covid-19 event could still materialise in New Zealand, cautions the man who meticulously studies the virus numbers.
Covid-19 data modeller Shaun Hendy says now is no time to relax, despite the low number of cases.
"The important caveat is that we still don't know the origin of the outbreak, I think that's something that would give us a lot of reassurance if we could understand where it had come from and that would really nail down the case that we're only looking at this one significant cluster," Mr Hendy told 1 NEWS.
A fresh outbreak that caused Auckland to shift to Alert Level 3 includes 58 people after a further nine cases were announced today.
The rest of New Zealand is under level 2 restrictions.
The source of the outbreak is yet to be determined but all cases can be linked to the one cluster.
Mr Hendy remained cautious when predicting the time it will take to stamp out this outbreak.
"Luck makes a lot of difference when dealing with small numbers," he said.
"We could see some fizzling out as the numbers get smaller or there is still a chance of a superspreading event so we can't relax completely."
A huge ramp up in testing over the last few days has provided confidence only one cluster exists.
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