The Chief Medical Officer has reiterated the importance of staying the course, stressing that there are two weeks left to "get back on track" before December.
Noting that numbers have stopped dropping in recent days, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Tony Holohan said that people seem to have taken their "foot off the gas" as of late - urging the public to reign it in once again for the remainder of the six-week lockdown.
Saying that there was great progress made at the start, that progress hasn't been sustained with Holohan putting that down to a number of different factors.
"We needed to keep that up and we needed to sustain that and we haven’t been able to sustain over the course of the last week.
"There are probably complex reasons for that but at least a part of that will be in the decisions that people have made and lots of things play into it."
I am increasingly concerned that the positive trends we had seen recently have not been maintained.
The 5-day moving average of daily cases has increased from an average of 350 cases on the 11th November to 424 today.
(1/4)— Dr Tony Holohan (@CMOIreland) November 17, 2020
Currently working on plans that would hopefully allow businesses to reopen as initially planned early next month, an official update on current restrictions is expected to be announced next week.