A further two deaths and 552 confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed this evening by the Department of Health.
This means there has now been a total of 1,915 Covid-19 related deaths in Ireland.
With 552 new cases, there is now a total of 62,002 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ireland to date.
Of the cases notified today, the Department of Health said: 275 are men and 275 are women, 63 per cent are under 45 years of age and the median age is 36 years old.
In terms of the location of today's cases: 173 are in Dublin, 86 in Cork, 40 in Limerick, 30 in Donegal and the remaining 223 cases are across all other counties.
The HPSC said as of 2pm today 330 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 47 are in ICU. 17 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.
It comes as Ireland's Intensive Care Units are dealing with the highest number of Covid patients since the end of May.
There are currently 47 people receiving treatment in critical care wards, with 6 admitted over the past day.
That is not close though to the peak of 155, which happened in early April.
However Infectious Disease expert, Dr. Jack Lambert is afraid we may end up there if community transmission it is not stopped. "Either these high risk individual are in the community and not wearing masks or people who are family members are bringing Covid-19 home to these high risk individuals.
ICU beds
"So yeah I think we need to do better than just lockdown. We need to wear a mask and we need to do all of these other interventions that are part of this package."
According to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, there have been 95,846 tests carried out in the last seven days, with a positivity rate of 5.2 per cent.
Mr Lambert also called for a strategy to exit Level 5 safely, and to stop it happening again.
He added that the Government is not emphasising "low tech" solutions like mask-wearing and social distancing as much as they should be.
Dr Lambert said: "Using masks is proper in all situations where you can't social distance, and that's most situations in urban communities outside and inside.
"Wearing a mask in the community where you're a young adult so you're not bringing it home to your vulnerable grandmother or vulnerable aunt or uncle who has risk indicators for COVID."
