The country is moving to Level 5 restrictions for at least one month in order to contain the rise in coronavirus cases.
There have been 13 more Covid-related deaths and 1,718 new cases reported by the Department of Health.
The Health Service Executive held its weekly press briefing where a number of these issues were discussed.
Here are five things we learned from the briefing:
41% rise in demand for testing
The HSE's National Lead for Testing and Tracing has said they have seen a 41% rise in the demand for Covid-19 testing, with 63,000 referrals seen over the past week.
Niamh O'Beirne said they expect to see that number double next week, as it is sharply increasing at the moment.
Ms O'Beirne said trends indicate in the coming days that they could be looking at 25,000 per day for several days.
21-30 age group has the highest detection rate
The largest number of referrals are coming from the 21-30 age group, which she said also has the highest virus detection rate at 8.9%.
This was followed by the 31-40 age group which accounted for 18.5% of all testing referrals, which had a detection rate of 7.6%.
The highest incidence rate per 100,000 people was being seen through 19-24 year-olds at 496.1, followed 25-44 year-olds at 340.5 per 100,000 people.
10% of new cases in recent weeks are among people over the age of 65.
The R number
The reproductive number now stands at 1.8 and getting the R number below 1 would now take an enormous national effort.
HSE Chief Clinical Officer Dr Colm Henry said even if we managed to get the R number down to 1.4, this would still translate into 2,000 cases per day by mid-January, and perhaps 3,000 per day by the end of January.
He said the corresponding number in hospitals at that stage could be as high as 800.
Speaking at the HSE briefing, Dr Colm Henry said "it is unthinkable that we are going to be able to maintain an R value of 1.8." | Read more: https://t.co/hFfTLB6R41 pic.twitter.com/QhSkPanvxf
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) December 30, 2020
Contact tracing
The HSE said they are seeing an increase of 129% in the number of calls made in the past week, which will rise in the weeks ahead.
Yesterday, contact tracers made just under 13,000 calls.
HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid said that there have been times where there have been over 100 cases in a day where people had between 20-30 close contacts.
Mr Reid said the number of contact tracing calls has risen by 300% in the past few weeks and is only going to grow further in the days ahead.
Hospitals
HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid said "hospitals are coping", but added that they will be under increasing pressure in the coming weeks.
Mr Reid said, as of this morning, there were 454 patients in hospital, with 39 in intensive care.
He said there were 650 available beds, but this has declined in recent days, adding that there are 55 critical care beds available.
