Professor Philip Nolan, chair of NPHET's epidemiological advisory group, suggested over the weekend that it could be April before new COVID-19 case numbers fall below 100 per day.
He also suggested that this summer would be an "outdoor summer", with people taking domestic holidays and socialising in the open air as much as possible.
Meanwhile HSE chief Paul Reid has attributed growing cases of the virus among young people to household visits for sports matches or a cup of tea, rather than house parties.
Is he right? What are the reasons for case numbers dropping so slowly?
To discuss this we were joined by Anthony Staines, Chair of Health Systems in the School of Nursing and Human Sciences at Dublin City University, and Gerry Killeen from the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at University College Cork.
