The Chief Medical Officer has said it appears that the current wave of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) has peaked, which was "substantially bigger" than any previous wave.
Speaking to RTÉ's Six One News, Professor Breda Smyth said it is quite a common virus and before the pandemic, most children would have had an infection by the age of two.
The majority of children have a mild illness and can be cared for at home.
"We do think we have seen the peak of it, but as you know with viruses it's very unpredictable," she said.
"We have seen a reduction in cases by 15 to 17 percent in the last week. In the most recent figures we have, we have seen over 600 cases. The previous week it was over 700 cases," Prof Smyth said.
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There has been a 25% reduction of hospitalisations in the last week and Prof Smyth said she hopes that downturn will continue.
However, she said in comparison to last year's RSV season, the highest weekly count was over 500, "so we still are higher than that".
She pointed out that there is still a significant burden of virus circulating among children predominantly.
"Over 50% of our cases are in children less than five years of age."
Earlier this week, the father of a 12-week-old baby boy who had RSV called for stronger messaging from the HSE about the virus after his son ended up going to Sweden for treatment.
Flu season begins
Prof Smyth said they are beginning to see the start of flu season in Ireland, with an increase in the last week.
She said she is concerned about children and the older population, and urged people to avail of vaccines.
"We have almost 70% uptake in our over 65s in the winter booster, but we haven't yet achieved our target of 75%," she said.
She appealed to people who haven't had their booster already to "please do so and protect yourself and try and prevent illness".
As Christmas nears, Prof Smyth stressed the importance of vaccination.
"We know we're going into a season of inter-generational mixing at Christmas so it's really important that we all enjoy ourselves and we can do that by protecting ourselves."
