Six cases of the Omicron variant have been detected in Ireland to date with more expected to be confirmed before Christmas.
The Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said on Thursday that “a number of probable cases are under investigation.”
He explained that although there is much uncertainty around the new strain, public health officials are confident the booster will protect people against it.
Data from South Africa has been released over the last week which suggests that the new strain is not as severe as previous variants.
But experts are stressing that it is too early to make any final judgement as to how exactly it will behave amongst the population.
At a briefing convened by South Africa's Department of Health, GP Unben Pillay listed the symptoms that Omicron patients were reporting.
According to Dr Pillay, one telltale sign may surface during the night, as CoventryLive reports.
He revealed that patients are presenting with "night sweats".
Night sweats are when you sweat so much that your night clothes and bedding are soaking wet, even though where you are sleeping is cool.
The GP added that he is also seeing patients with the variant presenting with a dry cough, fever, fatigue and "a lot of body pains". He suggested that vaccinated people tend to do "much better".
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation’s Emergencies Director, Michael Ryan, has said that "preliminary data doesn't indicate that this [Omicron] is more severe.
“In fact, if anything, the direction is towards less severity," he stated in recent days.
Professor Christine Loscher told RTE's Prime Time that the data so far is good - however, people can be reinfected if they had another strain of the virus already.
The DCU Professor said: "The WHO came out and said that the information we have at the moment is that the variant may be milder so the symptoms may be milder and people are potentially not going to get severely ill.
"The other piece of information is that it looks like it probably is more transmissible than Delta, but that is just looking at the data coming from South Africa.
"We also need to keep in mind that the data from South Africa is it's behaviour in a largely unvaccinated population and we don't know quite yet how it's going to behave in a highly vaccinated population like Ireland.
"Although we are looking at reinfection of those who had a different Covid infection and also breakthrough infections with vaccines."
