Dr. Tony Holohan's comments come as the number of people admitted to hospital in the last 24 hours increased by 32, a rise not seen since mid-February.
2,125 new cases have been confirmed, while 54 patients are now in intensive care.
Infectious Disease consultant, Eoghan de Barra, says infection rates will likely continue to rise for a few months:
"I think we're at least a month or two before we see any kind of plateauing in this. As Philip Nolan highlighted yesterday about 25% of the adult population haven't completed the vaccine schedule as yet. So there's a very large number of people susceptible to the virus and the virus is circulating in ever increasing numbers."
