Nine To Noon

Health officials are expecting more cases will have been detected in Auckland's outbreak overnight, and will be briefed once the results are back later this morning. Ten community cases have been identified so far. Three more cases were revealed last night, two of them young people linked to the first group of seven.The third is a woman in her 60s with no connection to the others but a link to the border. The list of places of interest in Auckland and Coromandel now sits at almost 70 and includes shopping malls, bars, cinemas, supermarkets, a large secondary school, a church and Sky City Casino. Potentially thousands of people are now considered contacts. Susie speaks with Otago University Professor of Public Health, epidemiologist, Michael Baker.

Microbiologist Associate Professor Dr Siouxsie Wiles on battling Delta at Covd-19 alert level 4 and what to do with pets.

If you are a budding author, or would like some advice on how get started putting pen to paper, author and teacher, Diane Brown has some handy tips. She is the founder of Creative Writing Dunedin and was an inaugural fellow at the Michael King Writer's Studio. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Landfall, Poetry NZ and NZ Listener. Next month she is hosting a memoir writing session at Create book and art festival, held in the Mackenzie region.

Luke Finnegan reviews Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson, and other very short stories by Jack Remiel Cottrell, published by Canterbury University Press.

Te Korowai Hauora o Hauraki, is a rural, Iwi-based, not-for-profit health provider in the Hauraki rohe, and it's set up a number of swabbing centres across the Coromandel this morning. The centre in Coromandel Town opened at 9am - and had about one hundred cars lined up at the Thames-Coromandel District carpark just after it opened. Riana Manuel is chief executive of Te Korowai, and joins Susie from the swabbing front line.

What's the biggest bike trip you've done? Whether it's a few hours or a few days, it likely doesn't compare to the epic bike ride of Freddie Gillies. Alongside his brother and two friends, they cycled 23,000 kilometres, from Bali to Buckingham Palace in 2017. Passing through more than twenty countries, they battled extreme heat, sub-zero temperatures, injury, illness and heartbreak... and had the time of their lives. And in doing so, they also raised almost $35,000 in support of Leukaemia and Blood Cancer New Zealand. Freddie has now published a book, The Big Bike Trip. It's filled with stunning photography by his friend Sean Wakely and Freddie's inspirational account of turning a dream into reality.

Australia correspondent Karen Middleton joins Susie to look at how multiple jurisdictions are now battling the Delta outbreak, with Sydney's lockdown tightened further to stop people moving around, Canberra's extended by two weeks and Melbourne's by another week. Among the greatest concerns is the fact it's now reached into rural areas in remote parts of New South Wales and indigenous communities, which have low vaccination rates. Meanwhile PM Scott Morrison has confirmed that some local staff in Afghanistan who worked for Australia will not be able to be rescued, as Australia mounts its evacuation mission. And Police are investigating a terrible home invasion and attack that has left former Wallabies rugby player and now Tongan national coach, Toutai Kefu, in hospital with stab wounds.

Electric passenger planes are set to feature on departure boards in NZ within five years. Blenheim based Sounds Air is unveiling plans to be the first Australasian airline offering electric-powered flights. It plans to have a fleet of at least three 19-seater aircraft set for take-off by 2026, and eventually to fully-convert to an all-electric fleet. Susie Ferguson speaks with Sounds Air Chairman and Director, Rhyan Wardman.

The community spread of the Delta variant in Auckland has resulted in nurses immediately calling off their strike. Around 30,000 nurses, midwives and health care assistants from the Nurses Organisation and 1500 midwives from the MERAS union were due to walk off the job tomorrow, after failing to reach agreements over pay and conditions with district health boards. NZNO manager of industrial servicers Glenda Alexander says they remain frustrated with chronic, understaffing, but withdrawing strike action in a national emergency is the right thing to do.

There are now five cases of the highly infectious delta strain of Covid 19 confirmed. One of them is a nurse at Auckland City Hospital, where internal lockdown measures are now under way. The first case detected in Auckland yesterday is a 58 year old Devonport man, who also travelled to the Coromandel. It's still unclear whether the cases are linked to people coming over the border, and genomic sequencing is underway. The entire country is at alert level four. But is this hard, fast lockdown going to be enough to get on top of the virus? Susie speaks with WHO advisor and Professor of Epidemiology at the University of New South Wales, Mary-Louise McLaws.