The Department of Health has confirmed 9,006 new cases of Covid 19 today.
It's also confirmed that the number of people being treated in Irish hospitals for Covid 19 has increased by 22% since Sunday.
Latest figures from the HSE show that there are 521 patients with the disease in hospital - an increase of 60 on yesterday.
While 92 patients are receiving ICU care...up 1 since yesterday.
The figures also show that there has been a 30.5% positivity rate on tests conducted in the last week.
Trinity Biochemistry Professor Luke O'Neill says the link between cases and hospitalisations has been broken:
"The statisticians are looking at this now and the link from cases to hospitalisation to death has been broken with Omicron. That's very clear now. Previously with Delta, there was a clear link. You could predict it almost: A number of cases would result in X number of people in hospital and then, sadly, death rates. That's gone down a huge amount with Omicron. It's a tenth of what it was so something's happened there. Omicron is quite different to Delta and that gives us a bit of hope, I guess, as we move into January."
