737 people are in hospital with Covid-19 today as the country's health system deals with a trio of viruses.
As well as the surge in Covid hospitalisations, admissions for flu and RSV are also on the rise.
The HSE and IMO have asked GPs to consider working longer shifts and weekends to cope with the increased demand on health services.
Dr. Ilona Duffy - a GP based in Monaghan - says recent calls for extra resources were ignored:
"We're all fully aware that we're facing into a real crisis and we have seen this build over the last few weeks. We kind of predicted this might happen and months ago, those of us who were involved in out of hours GP planning had warned of this and asked for extra resources and some forward planning which unfortunately wasn't done yet. Here we are, just as everything closes before Christmas. Suddenly this announcements made that GPS would be requested to run these clinics."
