Morning Report

The Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield has apologised for the quarantine control fiasco of recent days and says he is committed to ensuring the border is watertight.

With a global pandemic raging off shore, and hundreds still arriving back into the country, how realistic is it to think we can successfully seal ourselves off from Covid-19?

Professor Michael Plank is from the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Canterbury.

Over 1000 seasonal workers from Vanuatu stranded in New Zealand will finally return home this week, with the first flight departing Christchurch this morning.

The repatriation flights are thanks to a massive joint effort by their employers and the governments of both countries.

The Vanuatu nationals will be flown home by the Royal New Zealand Airforce this week, in its biggest international airlift in 25 years.

Richard Palmer is the acting chief executive of Summerfruit NZ.

Today marks the inaugural World Albatross Day.

While it is a day of celebration for the species, not all is well for the birds.

RNZ Otago-Southland reporter Timothy Brown headed out to the world's only mainland Royal Albatross breeding colony at Taiaroa Head, and filed this report.

Former national security advisor John Bolton's memoir has sent shock waves through US politics as the former aide alleges President Trump isn't "fit for office".

The Trump administration will go to court tomorrow in an effort to halt the publication going on sale.

The new book, The Room Where It Happened, has also caused consternation among Democrats who are angry that Mr Bolton refused to share this information during last year's impeachment investigations.

Washington DC correspondent Simon Marks speaks to Morning Report.

The extent of the economic hit from Covid 19 is starting to be come clear.

GDP figures for the first three months of the year are worse than expected with the economy shrinking for the first time in almost a decade.

This morning Westpac's regional roundup is predicting severe recession for every part of the country.

In Taranaki Maori and people under 30 are the worst hit by job losses because of the pandemic.

The latest jobseeker numbers for the region have jumped 25.6 percent since just before the lockdown to total more than 9700 in early June.

Taranaki Whanganui reporter Robin Martin has been speaking to some of those whose lives have been turned upside down.

In its latest regional roundup, Westpac says the Covid-19 pandemic will be a great leveller, with no region coming out unscathed.

Every region in the country is forecast to be heading for a deep recession and rising unemployment this year, followed by a recovery from late-2021.

Dominick Stephens is Westpac's chief economist.

The future of a Trans-Tasman bubble is under threat.

Australia's Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham has warned that his country's border will most likely be locked down until 2021.

The infection control shambles in New Zealand over recent days has raised doubts over our ability to rigorously keep Covid-19 out.

Winston Peters is Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister.

The man now in charge of the isolation and quarantine system has declined to be interviewed on Morning Report.

Air Commodore Digby Webb is expected to hold a news conference later today.

Defence Minister Ron Mark speaks to Corin Dann.

A woman who arrived in the country on the same flight as a man who now has Covid-19 had to badger health staff before they would test her.

The test eventually happened yesterday - five days after her arrival in the country.

Former RNZ reporter Alexa Cook, who still hasn't been given the all-clear, has been confined to her hotel since returning from the UK on 13 June.

Health officials revealed yesterday that a man in his 60s tested positive for Covid-19 after arriving from Pakistan.

He flew via Doha and then Melbourne to Auckland on the same flight as Cook.

Speaking from her hotel room, she says she only realised she had been in transit with New Zealand's latest Covid-19 case when she tuned into yesterday's media briefing.

A powerful offshore earthquake has been felt throughout the North Island and parts of the South, but there is no tsunami threat.

The magnitude 7.4 jolt struck about ten to one this morning, south of the Kermadec Islands iin waters 700 kilometres northeast of Gisborne It occured at a depth of 33 kilometres. Civil Defence initially told people in coastal areas to stay away from beaches, as a precaution, while it assessed the threat of a tsunami.

Fifty minutes after the quake struck, Civil Defence confirmed there was no tsunami threat to New Zealand.

The American agency that monitors the wider region has also ruled out a tsunami threat for the Pacific Islands.

About an hour before New Zealand's 7.4 shock, a magnitude 5.1 quake struck on the same fault-line in Tongan waters.