One of the country's leading Covid experts has said that new variant Omicron XE may be even "more infectious" than BA.2.
Luke O'Neill, a professor of immunology at Trinity College Dublin, said he believes that there will be another Covid surge in the autumn that could cause Covid case numbers to soar.
However, he said that hopefully new vaccines and ventilation technology could help Ireland prepare for that scenario.
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"There's no doubt there will be a surge in the autumn and then we're going to have a lot more cases again and that's a concern," he told Pat Kenny on Newstalk on Thursday.
"It's all about preparedness now really.
"What's really interesting is the EU have a huge fund now that countries can apply to help fund this kind of thing and help fund research.
"We'll hopefully be getting access to some of those funds as well."
This comes as a new Covid advisory group has been set up which will undertake horizon scanning, looking at new Covid variants of interest and concern, as well as advising the government on the best public health response in relation to the varients.
"The people on this group, we've been doing that anyway for the past two years and we said we'll bring that expertise, we'll see what's happening with variants, with new vaccines," he said.
"There's lots of vaccines in development. Maybe ventilation could be huge, there might be new technological advances there.
"And of course, we want Ireland to access the very best of things that are out there and advise the government on what do would be the goal."
Prof O'Neill said Omicron XE is "the next one", which is a mix of the highly infectious Omicron BA.1 strain and Omicron BA.2 variant.
"What's happened now is Omicron and BA.2 have now had a baby, if I can put it in that way, and it's a hybrid of the two of them," he said.
"This happens with viruses, it's called re-combination and parts of both viruses now have gone into XE, that was first seen in England.
"We have to give the English credit, they're the best at tracing variants to be honest, they've got great genomics technology in England. It's also in Japan
"Now the big question is, what will this hybrid do? Will it be more infectious?
"There's some evidence it is even more infectious than BA.2, that's initial data.
"Will it cause more illness?
"This is a really important mission for our advisory group to keep an eye on these new variants as they emerge and then prepare for them."
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