A total of 738 more people have tested positive for coronavirus in Ireland, while a further 13 more deaths have been confirmed.
10 of these deaths occurred in February, 1 occurred in January, 1 occurred in October and 1 date of death remains under investigation.
The median age of those who died was 81 years and the age range was 55 - 92 years.
Dublin was the hardest-hit region with 311 new cases, while there was 54 in Limerick, 36 in Cork, 34 in Offaly, 33 in Donegal and the remaining 270 cases are spread across 20 other counties.
The latest figures were announced by the Department of Health this evening.
Chair of the COVID-19 Vaccination Taskforce and former President of DCU Prof Brian MacCraith said that one millions vaccines a month will be able to be administered by the second quarter of the year, with that number increasing to 500,000 a week in the year’s third quarter.
The Department of Health also confirmed that almost 400,000 doses of the vaccine had been administered up to last Wednesday, of which 150,000 doses were in long-term care facilities, over 200,000 to frontline healthcare workers, and almost 30,000 to over 85s.
Prof MacCraith estimates that close to half a million vaccine doses should be administered by the end of next week.
People in the age group 80-84 will also begin receiving their first dose of vaccine from this week.
These figures come after people with underlying health conditions such as cancer and immunocompromised and kidney patients, have been moved up to priority Level 4.
This group will begin receiving the vaccine from March 8.
"Mass testing of one Dublin hospital this week returned just four positive cases from 3,150 tests. That's a positivity rate of just 0.13%," The Health Minister Stephen Donnelly tweeted, describing the mass testing as “more strong evidence” for how well the vaccines were working.
This comes after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted unanimous unanimously last night to authorise Johnson and Johnson's single shot Covid-19 vaccine for use in the United States.
The European Medicines Agency is expected to take this recent decision on board as it discusses the new vaccine in 12 days’ time.
