A further 3,348 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed as new research has found that mild cases of the virus can cause neurological damage.
There have been another 1,407 positive cases of Covid-19 confirmed by PCR testing in Ireland.
In addition, a further 1,941 people registered a positive antigen test through the HSE portal.
As of 8am on Wednesday, 706 patients were hospitalised with Covid-19, of which 42 were in ICU.
It comes as the new Omicron variant of the virus has been confirmed in Britain and Northern Ireland.
On Monday, Professor Kingston Mills, professor of experimental immunology at Trinity College Dublin, said the new more transmissible strain of the Omicron coronavirus variant is likely to be now circulating in the Republic Ireland.
Meanwhile, as reported by National Geographic, mild cases of Covid-19 have been found to cause people's brain to shrink.
Research carried out in the UK, which studied 785 participants, found that four and a half months after mild Covid-19 infection, patients had lost between 0.2 and 2 per cent of brain volume.
Patients were also found to have thinner gray matter than healthy people.
In the area of the brain linked to smell, patients had 0.7 per cent more tissue damage compared to healthy people.
Researchers also found that infected participants’ performance on cognitive tests declined quicker than before they were infected with Covid-19.
Patients were found to take eight to 12 per cent longer on the two tests that measured attention, visual screening ability, and processing speed.
However, they were not significantly slower on memory recall, reaction time, or reasoning tests.
Viral infections have been known to cause long-lasting cognitive impairments, although the exact cause of Covid-19's cognitive impacts has yet to be established.
