A leading immunologist believes this year's Christmas celebrations should take place at the end of January 2021.
Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College, Tomás Ryan feels celebrating the festivities in December could hinder the progress we've made over the past few weeks.
We're now halfway through level 5 restrictions.
The measures have helped to reduce the country's 14-day incidence rate by 51%, when compared with the previous two weeks.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Hologan has described the improvement in the profile of the virus as encouraging.
Professor Tomas Ryan insists we need to keep up our efforts:
"One way of looking at this would be to delay Christmas until the end of January to have a real Christmas and a real party then".
He also believes it would be in everyone's best interest to extend level 5 restrictions "at least a few weeks beyond December 1st".
