The World Health Organisation is predicting a surge in Covid-19 cases in Ireland in September.
The WHO says new variants, along with decreasing immunity, will cause a peak in cases across Europe at the end of the summer.
It comes as the number of Covid patients in hospital has increased by over 50% in the past week.
271 people are currently in hospital with the virus, compared to 180 last Tuesday.
Professor of Comparative Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, Cliona O'Farrelly, says new variants are constantly being tracked:
"WHO are predicting the surge for Ireland and other parts of Europe in September because of these variants coming down, because the current vaccines wouldn't be quite as effective against these variants. I suspect that the spike that we're having now is because of behavior, but we probably still are likely to have the surge in September that's predicted by WHO."
