Ireland is now "on the right side of the curve" when it comes to COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations, according to the CEO of the HSE.
The number of people currently in hospital with the virus has dropped to 898 this morning.
There are currently 169 patients with coronavirus in ICU, down from 173 yesterday.
Paul Reid said the figures represented "some further welcome news for many patients and families".
"Both numbers are still higher than our peak last April but we get a good sense that we're on the right side of the curve now," he wrote on Twitter.
Dr Nuala O'Connor from the Irish College of General Practitioners agreed that recent efforts to suppress the virus have been working.
The Cork GP said "things are all moving in the right direction", with her practice receiving fewer coronavirus-related calls and more "normal" work resuming.
She told Newstalk Breakfast with Susan Keogh: "It is good news that we appear to be past the worst of the third wave but we need to continue to be extremely careful because although the numbers have dropped...there's still an awful lot of disease out there."
She said it will take at least another six weeks "before we get down towards that magic number of between 100 and 150 cases a day".
This echoes the comments made by Professor Philip Nolan yesterday that Irish people need to “keep our shoulders to the wheel” for the next six weeks to get cases below 100 per day.
The Chair of the COVID-19 modelling group said there is “no magic number” for easing restrictions but warned that case numbers need to be, “really quite low before we can take any risks whatsoever.”
Vaccines
It comes as just under 2,000 doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine will be administered to GPs today.
Four vaccination hubs have been set up in Dublin, Galway, Sligo and Portlaoise so doctors can get their second jab.
Meanwhile, the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to over 85-year-olds will commence from Monday.
Dr O'Connor added that inoculating everyone in that age group should be completed by the start of next month.
"It's going to take three weeks for us to administer the first dose to all of our over-85s.
"So next week about 84 larger general practices across the country are receiving their supply.
"The next week, I think it's in the region of about 320 GP practices will receive their vaccine supply for over-85s and then the following week again, the remainder.
"That's really got to do with the supply of the vaccine coming into the country."
The Pfizer immunisation will be the predominant vaccine given to that age cohort, with a small number of Moderna inoculations also being administered, Dr O'Connor said.
