The National Public Health Emergency Team is meeting today to discuss the potential lifting of lockdown restrictions in Kildare, Laois and Offaly.
The three counties were put back into partial lockdown on August 7, after a major spike in new Covid-19 cases.
These restrictions, which currently forbid people from traveling outside their own county, were due to be in place for two weeks.
NPHET will meet this morning to discuss whether or not they believe the measures should be lifted, eased or extended, before making a recommendation to the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and Taoiseach Micheal Martin.
It comes after Professor Philip Nolan warned yesterday that the level of community transmission of the deadly bug had doubled in a 10 day period.
He also said that the turn-around time for testing and contact tracing has risen dramatically to 2.85 days in recent weeks, up from 1.93 days on July 16.
Mr Nolan, who is the Chair of NPHET's Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, said: "One of the things that is difficult to monitor is the level of community transition, and the reason is this is that every case requires detailed investigation by public health teams, and it's only after that investigation that you know where someone has picked-up the disease.
"So we've had several hundred cases reported in the last seven days, prior to that, the level of community transmission was very low.
"But of those hundreds of cases reported in the last seven days, some we know to be associated with outbreaks but a significant proportion remain under investigation and it's not yet clear whether they are community transmission or linked to a contact or linked outbreak, but we do know the level of community transmission appears to have doubled in the last 10 days, so that's the reason we're moving at this point."
However, in some positive news, the number of Covid-19 patients in hospital has fallen to 16, down from 20 yesterday.
But 12 of these patients are currently in intensive care.
Ireland recorded two further deaths and 54 new cases of Covid-19 on Wednesday.
