The Health Minister says he is very hopeful the restrictions in the Midlands will be lifted on Sunday.
That is when the partial lockdown in Kildare, Laois and Offaly is scheduled to end.
The National Public Health Emergency team is meeting today to discuss what advice to give Government following a surge in cases in recent days.
266 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed this weekend alone.
Minister Stephen Donnelly says the easing of restrictions will depend on the public health advice.
"NPHET is meeting today and they will met later on this week where they will make a recommendation.
"So far my hope is that as of midnight this Sunday those restrictions will be relaxed, but we need to listen very carefully to the public health doctors.
Turnaround times
He also says that the next three weeks will be “incredibly important” and that there needs to be “the same intensity of focus” that there was in the early months of living with the virus.
Mr Donnelly said that this week there will be a review of testing and turnaround times and there will a review of foreign travel and an expert report on nursing homes which will contain 86 recommendations.
“We’ve got to listen to the doctors,” he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
At present there has been no conversation about extending restrictions to other counties and the plan is for restrictions in Laois, Offaly and Kildare to be lifted at midnight on Sunday night.
The Minister pointed out that elsewhere in Europe when restrictions were relaxed there had been a spike in cases.
He said that “thankfully” the number of hospitalisations, the number of Covid patients in ICU and the number of fatalities was low, this was possibly because the median age of patients was young.
However, he warned that there could be a time lapse between cases being identified and being hospitalised.
