Ireland could be just weeks away from lockdown measures if cases continue to soar and NPHET make another recommendation to shut the country down.
Every county is currently at level three but the Government are also making plans in case a shutdown is necessary.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan has been warning that while the situation is in Irish people's hands - it continues to deteriorate every day.
And World Health Organisation chief Dr Michael Ryan - an Irish man himself - has spoken about the possibility of more lockdowns across Europe.
Dr Ryan said that while lockdowns can work to halt the virus' growth, it is not the only solution.
The top doctor said on Friday: "I didn't state lockdowns were not necessary, I said that lockdowns were not the absolute and only consequence of new cases, that there were many situations in which the numbers can be contained in the ways that we have been speaking about and the ways many countries have demonstrated since the very beginning of the pandemic.
"If you catch this disease in the early stages, or not so early stages in some cases...and you work hard on surveillance and cluster investigation and isolating cases and quarantining contacts and ensuring we can break chains of transmission, even though many cases can be asymptomatic and hard to find."
But the Mayo man stressed that if you leave the virus grow too much it means a lockdown may be the only option.
He added: "You start behind and need to catch up, the further you are behind the harder it is to catch."
The WHO chief of emergencies added that many countries get to a stage where they are too far behind and have to lockdown.
