Chris Hipkins says he wanted to get his facts straight, before accusing a border worker of evading coronavirus testing for five months.
National MP Chris Bishop says the Covid-19 Response Minister knew on April 8 the worker hadn't been swabbed since November, but sat on it for six days.
However, Hipkins told Mike Hosking there was a reason he didn't reveal there were no results on the border worker testing register, for Case B.
"At that time, they were reporting that they had been had regularly testing, their employer was reporting they had been regularly tested, and an investigation was going on to identify who was telling the truth here."
He also spoke about the 500 extra MIQ rooms that will be available per fortnight, mainly for skilled and critical workers.
That includes seasonal workers, construction specialists, international students and refugees.
Hipkins says there are still 20,000 rooms over the next three months for returning New Zealanders.
"We have actually increased the size of the contingency should anything on the trans-Tasman happen and we need to accommodate plane loads of people at short notice, we have the spare capacity to be able to do that."
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