Another indoor day

It’s been dreich all day today, so I’ve had no option but to stay inside.

We are quite excited because the Tui has been visiting the Tui bird feeder regularly the last couple of days and this afternoon he stayed long enough on one visit for me to get a photo.  So wonderful to see him enjoying the sugar syrup.

At 11:59pm tonight, the hard border that has been in place around the Auckland region since 17 August will finally open.

There are 80 new community cases today across Auckland (51), Waikato (21), Bay of Plenty (7) and Lakes (1).

Meanwhile, New Zealand has had its first brush with the Omicron variant. Several members of a flight crew have been identified as close contacts of an Omicron case in Australia. These crew members arrived in New Zealand last night and are in an MIQ facility, as per standard international air crew arrival procedure. Let’s hope they didn’t bring Omicron with them and, if they did, that MIQ is where it stays.