Professor Philip Nolan has urged people to not be 'disheartened or disappointed' if COVID-19 daily case numbers increase temporarily due to resumed testing of close contacts.
NPHET today reported 1,318 new cases of the virus, as well as 75 additional deaths.
Professor Nolan, who chairs NPHET's modelling group, says the spread of the virus is slowing.
However, he cautioned there could be a short-term rise in case numbers after testing of all close contacts was resumed late last week.
He said: "Testing of close contacts will increase case numbers in the coming days - let's not be disheartened, disappointed or distracted by that.
"We would then expect cases numbers to further decrease, provided we maintain the efforts: we really do need to prevent any plateau and maintain full suppression for the next few weeks."
Professor Nolan stressed that the reduction in COVID-19 case numbers has not plateaued, amid concerns that case numbers have not fallen below 1,000 a day.
However, he said detailed data shows there's been a 'stable level of exponential decline' in virus rates recently
Meanwhile, the reproductive number for the virus is between 0.5 and 0.8, which is marginally above last week.
New data also shows three quarters of recent cases involve the British variant.
Professor Nolan said it's now "firmly established" as the dominant strain of the virus here.
