An Irish doctor has warned people not to go to work or send their children to school if they are experiencing signs of infection.
Covid Lead for the Irish College of General Practitioners, Dr Nuala O'Connor, said people should not continue about their day if they are unwell, even if they get a negative result on an antigen test.
Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland, she said: "I think what is important is to get people to focus on what are the three most important things they can do at the moment to try to help bring these numbers down and the single most important thing is to stay home of you have symptoms of infection."
She added: "In general practice we are seeing people say 'oh it's okay I don't have Covid. I have a sore throat or a cough, or a fever, but my antigen is negative. I don't have Covid'.
"Well, even if you don't have Covid, and one antigen doesn't definitively exclude it, you have some other infection, and what we need people to do is to stay at home if they have symptoms of infection.
"Don't send their child to school or creche until they start to feel better."
Dr O'Connor also urged people to get their booster vaccination or their first and second doses if they have not done so yet.
She said: "It's also really important that people continue to get their booster or their third dose.
"We're good in Ireland. About 75 per cent of people have had that third dose, but as you move down through the age groups, if you get down to under 24, less than 50 per cent have had that booster.
Dr O'Connor added: "We know that of those people who are in hospital who are actually sick with Covid, not just a positive test, but no symptoms and most importantly 50 per cent of those who are sick in intensive care with Covid are not vaccinated.
"So we know vaccination will protect us against severe disease, hospitalisation and death, so it's so important to people listening out there, if you haven't yet had your booster or if you haven't yet been vaccinated or presented a child in your family to be vaccinated, please do consider getting vaccinated."
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