Don’t make concrete plans and don’t be disappointed if further restrictions are rolled out locally as a “significant” cluster – “maybe more than one” – is about to grip the country, health authorities say.

Nelson Marlborough Health chief medical officer Dr Nick Baker said, however, a shift in alert levels in the top of the south would not be made without strong evidence of a local problem.

“At this stage we haven’t got that evidence,” he said.

“But actually it’s going to get worse before it gets better, and we need to be ready for that … there’s a significant cluster coming and maybe more than one.”

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Marlborough moved to alert level 2 at noon on Wednesday, following the announcement of four coronavirus cases in Auckland on Tuesday night. On Thursday, 13 additional cases were announced, all linked to the South Auckland family.

Baker said the new cases had “a lot of attributes that make it quite concerning”.

But the measures taken by the Government indicated it did not believe the virus was circulating outside Auckland.

Baker said the board was not aware of any close contacts of the Auckland outbreak in Nelson Marlborough.

“We don’t believe it’s circulating in places other than Auckland, but we can’t guarantee it,” he said.

“Since we heard of the cases in Auckland, we’ve reactivated a lot of our health and community planning, and we need to be ready.”

Health authorities in Nelson Marlborough conducted more than 500 Covid tests on Wednesday, believed to be the highest number since the pandemic began.

Over the previous months, they had averaged 30 to 60 a day, with one spike day of 297 following the news two international arrivals had been released from quarantine facilities before later testing positive.

Baker said people would be wise to “make their plans flexible” in the coming weeks.

He encouraged people to continue with their healthy lifestyles and activities but not to be “bitterly disappointed if something has to change in the short term because of increased restrictions”.

When asked about the future of Covid-19 in June, Baker predicted New Zealand would see “little outbreaks” that could be stamped out quickly.

In this situation, he said authorities would get on top of the outbreak, but they still did not know how big the problem was.

“If you think about it like a pebble landing in a pond, if you know where it landed you can easily track the ripples. But if you go in a bit later and catch the edge of one ripple, it takes a lot longer to trace it back to the centre.”

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said they had still not identified the source of the outbreak.

Baker said, as it was a “tricky virus”, there was the possibility the source of the cases might never be found.

“As a community the reassurance is that we’ve got all the systems in place to damp this down and get on top of it.”

But with increased capacity for contact tracing, testing and health service capability, he said “we are much better at this than we were”.

The new cases also showed there was more to learn, he said.

“We know it spreads well from person to person, but this whole question mark now hanging over could it be spread in other ways, like products in a cold store.”

People in Nelson Marlborough should follow the same guidelines as the last time they were in level 2, with social distancing, good hand hygiene and staying home if sick.

It was critical people recorded where they had been, the times they had been there and the people they had seen, preferably with the Covid Tracer app.

The importance of masks had also been established since the last stint in level 2, Baker said.

“People in the wider community should absolutely wear masks if they feel they want to, or if they’re in situations where they’re going to get close to people,” Baker said.