Testing and tracing needs to be ramped up and more effort needs to be made to ensure New Zealanders returning from overseas are strictly quarantined.
Senior government officials and the Health Minister fronted to an Opposition-dominated Select Committee via video link on Tuesday morning, established to play a watchdog role while Parliament is suspended.
They heard from one of New Zealand's leading epidemiologist's Dr David Skegg who told them lockdown might not be enough to eliminate the virus.
New Zealand has recorded 58 more cases overnight, with eight main clusters, bringing the total to 647 - 74 people have recovered.
RNZ political editor, Jane Patterson, filed this report.
