The Chief Medical Officer is urging people to only meet people they’re planning to spend Christmas with this week.

A further 5,279 COVID cases were announced last, with Dr Tony Holohan suggesting Omicron now accounts for about two-thirds of the country’s cases.

Despite the high case numbers, the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital and ICU continued to fall last night.

There were 396 COVID patients in hospitals around the country at 8pm – a fall of 23 on the day before and 61 on the week before.

The number of patients in hospital at the evening count has fallen by one-third in the past month.

Meanwhile, the number of patients in ICU has fallen by 28 to 102 in the past month.

'Spreading like wildfire'

Dr Cliona Ni Cheallaigh, Infectious Diseases Consultant at St James's Hospital in Dublin, told Newstalk Omicron is ‘spreading like wildfire’.

“What is more important is how many of the cases become seriously unwell and require hospital care or have their lives threatened by COVID,” she said.

“I think that will determine what level of restrictions are needed in the following weeks and we just don’t know that yet.

“It definitely spreads like wildfire; I think we can see that very clearly and if that results in people becoming seriously unwell, then we will need to think about further restrictions.”

She said health officials will be waiting to see what happens with the hospitals in the next week or two.

“I have just been looking at hospitalisations in London and they seem to be increasing and there seems to be a lot of young unvaccinated people getting very sick with Omicron – which is a worry,” she said.

London

In the past three weeks, Omicron has seen cases in London rising almost five-fold – from a base of around 5,000 per day one month ago to 22,750 yesterday.

While hospitalisations have started to rise, the increase is not nearly as steep as the rise in cases.

Yesterday, there were 1,904 COVID patients in London’s hospitals – a 41% increase in the space of a week.

One month ago, there was 1,095 COVID patients in hospital – meaning the figure has risen 84% in four weeks.

In that time, daily cases have risen by just short of 500%.