Health chiefs said on Wednesday night Christmas can be saved if the public does the right thing over the next three weeks.
Chief Medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said NPHET are conscious of Christmas and we need to get the disease as low as possible so families can mingle.
He claimed the country would get through Christmas "very well if we go into Christmas at 50 cases a day".
He said: “We will give specific consideration to Christmas, we hope we're not in a situation in disease terms where we're having to advise the population that they can't meet other households or travel outside of their households at Christmas time because we understand how socially challenging that would be for people.
"It's in our minds, we haven't had an expressed conversation about Christmas, but each of us is conscious - we all live in this country, we know what it's like here.
"I think that something will happen to the reproductive number over Christmas which would be almost out of our control in the sense that we'll all, maybe some of us included, not be as adherent to some of the rules as we should be.
"Christmas will be a challenging time, what we have to try and ensure is we get the disease as low as possible before that.
"If I could just figuratively give an example, if our reproductive number over the two weeks of Christmas ends up being 2 or 2.5 because of the way we socialise over Christmas, well, it matters greatly if we go into Christmas at 50 cases a day, 500 cases a day or 1,000 cases a day.
"Because we will get through Christmas very well if we go into Christmas at 50 cases a day and the R number is 2.5, we'll be fine."
Professor Philip Nolan added: “We can still save Christmas I presume, if we do the right thing over the next three weeks."
