Christmas will be cancelled for anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 from today.
Anyone who tests positive for the virus from today must isolate for 10 days - meaning they would miss the big day.
Dr Mary Favier, Covid lead for the Irish College of General Practitioners, said that our behaviour within the next few days will determine how we spend Christmas.
She said: “People must remember that if they have a COVID-positive test tomorrow, they are now in self isolation on Christmas Day.
"So it is our personal behaviours in the next few days that will make a difference to how we manage Christmas and how we manage the next surge."
Dr Favier also believes that there is likely to be a very big surge in cases this festive season as a result of the Omicron variant.
She continued: “It’s going to come down to us unfortunately as individuals and how we all behave over the next number of weeks.
“People should remember that if they have a Covid positive test tomorrow they are now in self isolation on Christmas Day.”
Meanwhile, Professor Sam McConkey said that Covid jabs are the solution, not more restrictions.
He told Newstalk Breakfast: "I don't feel we should be closing things down or restricting people more at this point.
"What I really would like to see is a big increase in vaccination capacity, like what we had back in the summer when we were rolling out vaccines very, very fast.
"That capacity has been lost and I would like to see it rebuilt in the next day or two; and then to boost most of our population over the next 20 days or so."
"I think we should be encouraging folk to use masks, to work from home, to socialise in small groups - as we've all been mostly doing for the last couple of weeks.
"We don't know how clinically severe it'll be: it will definitely come, it will definitely spread through the population - but many of us are hopeful that it won't be as bad as some of the previous strains."
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