As Covid case numbers continue to rise in Ireland, the government has come under increasing pressure to re-evaluate current restrictions.
Almost 12,000 new cases were reported in the country on Monday, with officials recording 5,263 positive PCR tests and 6,466 positive antigen tests.
The growing infection rates are now having a significant impact on the health system, with 1,624 patients in hospital with the virus, an increase of 56 from Sunday, and 54 of whom are in ICU.
READ MORE: Covid Ireland figures today as new BA2 variant drives surge and Government gives restrictions update
A senior government source has said the number of patients in hospital is expected to reach up to 2,000 "in the next week".
It is now feared that any reintroduction of Covid measures would be "too little too late" as the highly transmissible BA.2 Covid variant has already spread through much of the community.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has warned that serious new measures would be needed to contain the new strain.
Speaking to Fianna Fáil members on Monday night, he said the actual number of Covid cases in the community is likely to be several hundred thousand cases, according to sources at the online meeting.
Minister Donnelly told the meeting that extremely restrictive measures would be needed to combat the current transmissibility of the variant but said Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan had not advised such restrictions at this time.
A source said: "He was clear that Holohan hadn't recommended bringing back any restrictions."
Minister Donnelly also said that despite the scaling back of testing, the Department and the HSE are working on a medium-term plan to scale up testing, tracing and vaccination as the country deals with the current wave.
The news comes as health sector workers have warned that the current situation in hospitals is unsustainable.
The president of the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, Dr Fergal Hickey, there are large numbers of patients on trolleys and hospitals are "teeming with Covid".
"That's the reality of it. The elastic band has broken at this stage.
"They're [people] arriving for all kinds of reasons, but what we're discovering is that there is a proportion of patients who are not symptomatic and turn out to have Covid.
"We cannot admit them to a bed adjacent to somebody who is vulnerable, so we have to find a means of trying to isolate them, and that's really difficult in practice."
People have been urged to get their booster vaccination if they haven't already done so, as HSE boss Paul Reid warned that there is no indication that the current wave has peaked.
Speaking to RTE, he said there was no indication of a downward trend and warned that Irish hospitals expected to be dealing with this wave "throughout April".
READ MORE: Symptoms of rampant BA.2 variant, NPHET replacement and restrictions update
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