Director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory Cillian de Gascun has said that due to December and Christmas behaviour, he expects to see a further increase in Covid cases in the next week or two.
He said that the latest data should be available in the next day or so, but the trend was that numbers were increasing on a weekly basis, despite the challenge of people not presenting for testing.
As of 8am this morning, there were 686 confirmed Covid-19 cases in hospital, which is down from 692 yesterday. There are 28 confirmed cases of the virus in ICUs around the country as of 11.30am this morning, up three on yesterday's figure of 25.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Dr De Gascun said that viruses will continue to evolve, but when it comes to the spread of the virus or variants of the virus, it is human behaviour that drives everything as the virus follows the wave of human interaction.
He added that in 2022, there was a far greater susceptible population for influenza than before, and it was a "mixed season" due to the types of flu out there, so it was 50/50 on whether a younger or older person would get the flu meaning "everybody is getting infected".
It was a "perfect storm" in many respects, he said, as many people have not had the opportunity to be exposed.
"We did sequence to an extent that wasn't sustainable, and I would suggest is not really necessary. In the early stages, we were trying to identify novel variants, but at the moment now we're in an Omicron era so everything we're seeing is a sub lineage of Omicron.
"We've seen a couple of recombinants, and we're seeing some sub variants or variants becoming more transmissible through evolution, but that's what viruses do. We need to sequence and be smart about how we sequence as we need to be efficient.
"Really you want to target your sequencing now, rather than just the population-wide sequencing that we were doing previously," Dr De Gascun added.
On a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic, Dr De Gascun said it is always important to look back at what happened and learn lessons.
"I would sort of be supportive if the Government feels it is required, but I think we have a lot of the lessons already in the context," he said.
Dr De Gascun said it comes down to infrastructure and planning and during Covid, Ireland was "building systems from scratch".
It is now about preparing better for the next pandemic, he added.
