There have been 3,035 further cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) says it's been notified of 1,426 PCR-confirmed cases of the virus.
While yesterday, 1,609 people registered a positive antigen test through the HSE portal.
As of 8.00am today, there were 654 patients hospitalised with the virus - a drop of 52 on Wednesday.
Of these 37 were in ICU - a decrease of five in the last 24 hours.
It comes as results of a trial of a 'variant-proof' COVID-19 vaccine is expected in the coming days, according to Professor Luke O'Neill.
The US army is leading the race to find a vaccination that will work against all coronavirus variants.
Prof O'Neill says test results on animals have been impressive.
"They've stuck it on a nano-particle - a tiny, tiny particle - made of a thing called ferritin, studded with loads of these RBDs.
"[It] went into monkeys and amazingly it protects against SARS - the original virus - SARS-CoV-2, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omicron.
"It protected against all of those in monkeys.
"They're in the middle of a phase one trial in humans - any day now actually... we're going to get the data from that phase one trial soon.
"That's very, very hopeful that that US Army-derived vaccine could be the first universal vaccine against COVID-19".
