Infectious disease expert Professor Sam McConkey has said the current wave of Covid-19 in Ireland would peak in a few weeks time.
Prof McConkey told Newstalk he expects hospitals will be forced to delay operations to cope with the influx of Covid patients.
He said: "It's very different now from the first, second, third wave because we tried really, really hard to keep everything else going.
"Hospitals have been doing lots of normal healthcare up until the last few days. That's probably at crisis point now, and we're going to have to cut back on scheduled care because there just isn't enough room."
Prof McConkey said the continued rollout of the booster vaccination programme in the coming weeks should see a decrease in infection rates before Christmas.
He said: "Many of us hope that with the decrease in social contacts that we really hope for over the next few weeks, that the number of cases will initially level off and then start to come down somewhere between two to four weeks from now.
"By then, most of the unvaccinated will have been infected, and a lot of the under 12s who are going to be infected will have been infected.
"And then hopefully the boosters will also kick in, and then cases will start to drop again."
The news comes after the Department of Health reported a further 4,181 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, with 668 people now in hospital, 125 of whom are being treated in ICU.
The number of patients in ICU reached the highest number since February on Sunday as Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan warned the public that they need to act now.
He said: "The current level of COVID-19 in Ireland is having a negative impact on the health of the people of Ireland and placing an enormous burden on our entire health system, from public health to general practice to our acute hospitals.
"Non-COVID care – including cancer surgery, cardiac care, hip and knee replacements, mental ill-health and all of the common ailments that, if identified and treated promptly, may be prevented from deteriorating further – continues to be severely impacted."
Dr Holohan said he understands that people are tired of the pandemic but said: "Through small but vital individual and collective actions we can turn this around."
