Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has issued a lockdown end date update alongside the latest vaccine news for Ireland this morning.
The former Taoiseach has said that Level 5 restrictions could remain in place until the most at-risk people in the country are vaccinated.
This news comes as Ireland aims to jab as many as 20,000 people a week from early January with the roll out of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine set to begin on Tuesday.
Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland, the Tanaiste said numbers were lower over the last few days because smaller numbers of people attended test dates around the Christmas period but he expects these cases to rise once again.
He said: "The Level 5 restrictions are really only coming into effect over the next couple of days.
"We know that won't be reflected in a fall in case numbers until the first or second week in January".
"No matter what is done, we would expect to see cases rise until the New Year."
Varadkar believes that the roll out of the vaccine will be the beginning of the end for Covid-19.
But he did have some bad news, admitting that although restrictions will be reviewed on January 12, he does not think cases will have fallen enough by then to have a more relaxed lockdown.
He continued: "I think that with the vaccine now being available, I think there would be a case of saying to the Irish people that we should keep these restrictions in place until such a time that we have protected our health care workers and most vulnerable.
"But that also needs to be reflected in the kind of restrictions that we put in place because they need to be sustainable for a prolonged period if they're not just for three or four weeks."
