The Department of Health has been notified of a further 16,986 cases of Covid-19.
The number of people with Covid-19 in hospitals has risen to 804, an increase of 87 compared to the same time yesterday morning.
This day last week there were 461 people in hospital with Covid-19.
The number of people in intensive care units with Covid-19 has risen by six since yesterday, with 93 patients receiving care in ICUs around the country.
The number of patients in ICU has remained relatively stable. There were 91 people in intensive care units with Covid-19 on this day last week.
The General Secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has described the situation with overcrowded hospitals and staff absent due to Covid as the "perfect storm".
Speaking on RTÉ's News At One programme, Phil Ní Sheaghdha said the staffing situation in hospitals was "very, very stretched, very difficult, and, as predicted at this time of the year, is always very busy in our acute hospitals".
She said that trolley count figures in the weeks leading up to Christmas showed that some hospitals were regularly overcrowded.
"You combine that with staff themselves becoming infected, and having to be absent obviously because they're ill, and you have the perfect storm, so this is unfortunately, the situation we find ourselves in despite us having said to the HSE and the Department of Health for a number of weeks that we had to make sure that there was more help for the acute hospitals at this time in January."
She said that there is a higher incidence of absence in ICUs and that increasingly, very sick patients are being nursed on wards because ICUs are under pressure.
Ms Ní Sheaghdha described this situation as "very tight and very, very serious at the moment".
Elective care must be cancelled across all hospital groups and emergency care prioritised, she insisted.
The Health Service Executive yesterday warned it expects more hospitals will have to curtail non-essential work in the coming days, because of the high number of staff absences due to Covid-19.
HSE Chief Operations Officer Anne O'Connor said they expect the staffing situation to get worse in the coming days and that it is not clear when the situation will peak.
She said in the Mater Hospital in Dublin there were 400 staff out, 250 of whom are Covid-positive and that has led to the curtailment of work and the cancellation of all leave.
"There's about 10% of staff out and that is of serious concern to us in one of our large model four hospitals," Ms O'Connor said.
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