The CEO of the HSE has warned that around 7,000 new cases are likely to be incoming per day this week as worrying times loom over the country.
Health chief Paul Reid described the current state of affairs as "frightening" stressing that the health service will be vaccinating people around the clock to ensure the vulnerable are protected as quickly as possible.
It comes as figures yesterday saw almost 5,000 new cases of the virus in Ireland which had hospitalised 730 more people and left 65 others in ICU.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, the HSE CEO said that Ireland has "run out of adjectives to describe how serious it is at the moment".
He said: "The trajectory we’re looking at would tell us within January we could be rising to 1,500-2,000 hospitalised cases, and a rise in ICU from anywhere from around 250 to 430. That’s how serious it is.
“I’m saying to everybody - we can stop this, we can turn this around: we have to."
He added: "We were looking at one day last week - if we calculated close contacts people had - we would have had a demand of over 50,000.
“I can’t state this more clearly: if you are a close contact, you must [still] restrict your movements for 14 days."
