Ireland can have less than 200 Covid-19 cases per day by early December if everyone plays their part during the second national lockdown.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin announced last night that the whole country would be placed under Level Five restrictions from late on Wednesday.
The move comes amid a soaring number of new infections right across the country, with the five day average now at a staggering 1,159.
The raft of new measures announced will see tens of thousands out of work, with pubs, restaurants, cafes, hairdressers, barbers and non-essential retail outlets close.
But the Taoiseach did give some hope for the festive season, saying we can still have a "very special" Christmas if everyone knuckles down from now until December 1.
This was re-emphasised by NPHET's Professor Philip Nolan, who has told how the virus can be suppressed in the next six week.
He said that Ireland's Reproductive Rate (R), which is currently at around 1.4, needs to get down to 0.5 to efficiently see a drop.
Mr Nolan told that achieving a rate of 0.7 to 0.9 "won't be enough" as figures would only temporarily fall.
In a series of tweets last night, he explained: "The move to Level 5 restrictions was a difficult decision for Government, and is very hard for people whose lives and livelihoods are most affected, but it was necessary to interrupt uncontrolled exponential growth of the pandemic.
"We can, collectively, suppress transmission of the virus again, if we fully enter into the spirit of these measures, and eliminate, for the next six weeks, close contacts other than our household, ‘bubble’, school or college, or essential work.
"Our modelling shows that to make a success of this, we need get viral transmission down to very low levels. A reproduction number of 0.9 or 0.7 won’t be enough, we need to aim for R = 0.5.
"And we need to keep R close to 0.5 for 6 weeks. If we held R at 0.5 for 3 weeks, cases would fall to about 400 per day, but rise again to about 1000 per day four weeks later. If we keep R at 0.5 for six weeks, cases remain below 200 per day until end-December."
