Ireland’s public health officials have confirmed 6,841 new cases of Covid.
That number is made up of 3,310 positive PCR tests on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, as well as 3,531 positive Antigen tests registered through the HSE’s portal over the weekend.
There are currently 535 patients in hospital with Covid, of which 43 are in ICU.
It comes as the Health Protection Surveillance Centre warned in its latest report that Covid case numbers remain high, despite a continued decrease in PCR positive and antigen positive cases.
There is growing concern about a new Covid subvariant Omicron XE, which was first identified in January, according to the World Health Organisation.
XE is a recombinant of the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 strains, and some studies have found it may be up to 43% more transmissible than the original Omicron that savaged the globe last winter.
At least one case of the XE variant has been confirmed in Ireland so far.
Trinity College Professor Luke O'Neill previously said that although the new strain shouldn't be a huge cause for concern, one aspect of the variant means it should be observed closely.
"We know it's recombinant...which means bits of Omicron have recombined with bits of BA.2, which is a sibling of Omicron, and bits of BA.1," he told RTE's Today with Claire Byrne programme last week.
"It's got three extra mutations that make it different from Omicron.
"The main thing is though it's mainly like BA.2 and that means it isn't causing a huge amount of concern because our immune system is holding up against BA.2 and Omicron XE seems to be very similar.
"But of course it's new and these three mutations that are brand new mean we need to watch it very closely."
The "slight concern" is the three extra mutations, which have previously never been identified in SARS-CoV-2, he said.
The immunology expert added that we can be optimistic that vaccines will prevent severe disease when it comes to Omicron XE.
He said that vaccines that can be effective against every emerging variant are in development and will be "the real dream" in tackling coronavirus.
"There is a huge amount of effort going in to try and make them," he said.
"People probably don't realise that there is still a frenzy of activity around making new vaccines - next-gen vaccines they are called. Some of them are even better than the current vaccines.
"There are 130 vaccines in development, so keep a close eye on that one as well."
Meanwhile, a public health expert has said he did not communicate the Covid models "as well as was necessary" to Government ministers, weeks before Ireland had the world's highest incidence of cases.
Professor Philip Nolan, who was a key member of the advisory group assisting the Government in the battle against Covid, made the comments at the University of Limerick on Monday.
The former head of National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) modelling said that as health experts, "we need to be better at communicating the range of possibilities and uncertainties".
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