RTE listeners were left frustrated after Dr Tony Holohan's line dropped at a crucial moment during a radio interview.
The Chief Medical Officer joined Bryan Dobson on RTE Radio One to share the latest update on restrictions and the progress of the Omicron variant.
To conclude the wide-ranging chat, veteran broadcaster Bryan asked: "Could further restrictions be under consideration ahead of Christmas by NPHET or is that it until the ninth of January?"
And Dr Holohan began his response: "So look, we need to continue our assessment of this evolving Covid situation, but specifically Omicron."
But it was at that moment that the Chief Medical Officer's line dropped out- prompting some jibes on social media given the government's recent decision to require NPHET members to seek permission before media interviews.
Irish Independent Political Correspondent Hugh O'Connell joked: "It’s slightly gas, given everything that’s happened this last week, that Tony Holohan was cut off from the RTE News At One just as [Bryan Dobson] was asking about whether there would be new restrictions before Christmas."
However before the CMO's time was cut short he did warn listeners that even if Omicron does turn out to be less severe that previous variants, if it is highly more transmissible that could still put a strain on hospitals.
He explained: "The early evidence is very clearly pointing toward an increase of transmissibility, that seems increasingly certain. That might arise because it's escaping the protective effect of a vaccine, or the virus itself is inherently more transmissible, or a combination of those two.
"The question of severity is still not known, we are seeing a reported increase in the number of hospitalizations reported in the early cases in South Africa. It's too early to conclude.
"But the important point to get across is that even if it's less severe, if it's more transmissible and can generate more cases, that itself at a population level could, paradoxically, create a significant challenge.
"So for the individual it might be slightly less severe, we don't know that now for sure yet, but even if it is, if there are many more individuals who pick up this infection, this could still present a very significant challenge in terms of the impact it has on public health and on the health services and so on."
And Dr Holohan also revealed that NPHET is expecting the variant to become "dominant" here - but said the extent and speed of that has not yet been determined.
He added: "It's a little too early to have reliable modelling that will answer that question with the specificity that we would like.
"What we do expect and our working assumption is if [Omicron] has this transmission advantage that it seems to have, it will, in the way that Delta did over Alpha, become dominant. And that's just the natural expectation that the world has."
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