Nearly a thousand positive tests for coronavirus were reported last night, bringing the total number of cases in the Republic to 10,647.
31 more patients have died south of the border and six in the North.
527 new cases have been confirmed here and another 465 by a lab in Germany.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan says until a vaccine is mass-produced, there will still be social distancing.
"Once we identity an effective vaccine or a number of effective vaccines, the manufacturing of those and the distribution of those is going to take time.
"For that period of time we are going to be dealing with restrictions of one kind or another.
"The work we're doing literally at the moment in these couple of weeks, between now and the fifth of May, is to try and identify what in fact those measures might be."
