The bounce back came as virus fears continue to roil equity, oil, gold and bond markets around the world as well as currency trading.
"It's come a long way very fast and we're just taking a bit of a breather until we get the next bit of information," said Mitchell McIntyre, a dealer at XE.
The domestic currency traded as high as 67.55 US cents in early January.
"We were drastically oversold in the bigger picture, but that doesn't mean it can't go lower – the down trend is still intact," McIntyre said.
"There are whispers of work on an oral vaccine but nothing too material has come about yet."
The Financial Times is reporting that Boston-based biotech start-up Moderna has sent vials of a potential vaccine to the US National Institutes of Health to be tested in humans. China's ambassador to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, told the Interfax news agency his country has developed a vaccine that has provide successful in initial tests.
McIntyre said predictions are difficult. "When a market's getting moved around, when its event-driven like this, you can do too much crystal ball gazing. We're just at the whim of the news cycle," he said.
The number of those infected with the coronavirus has passed 80,000 and more than 2,700 people have died from it, the latest including deaths in South Korea and Italy.
With the virus having been reported in 37 countries now, containment is looking unlikely.
Despite this, governments around the world are escalating measures aimed at containment. New Zealand's government is part of that trend, having yesterday extended its ban on travellers from China for a further eight days. No cases have been detected in New Zealand yet.
The New Zealand dollar was at 95.83 Australian cents from 95.64 cents at 5pm yesterday. It was at 49.05 British pence from 48.88, at 58.42 euro cents from 58.41, at 70.34 yen from 70.53 and at 4.4510 Chinese yuan from 4.4457.
The two-year swap rate nudged up to a bid price of 0.9947 per cent from 0.9800 yesterday while 10-year swaps fell to 1.2975 per cent from 1.3030.
