Ministers in the Covid Sub Committee will meet this evening to discuss how best to tackle the latest Covid wave.
The wider use of vaccine certs, antigen tests and working from home are all up for discussion.
596 people were in hospital last night with covid and 106 in ICU.
Professor Sam McConkey from the Royal College of Surgeons says vaccines aren't protecting as much against transmission.
"What we're finding is that this this vaccine, is more of a vaccine against disease and severe disease and death than a vaccine against transmission."
"So it doesn't really this particular vaccine you know, going into muscularly, it doesn't provide sort of immunity to your nose to stop you catching it."
"Or, importantly, to stop you passing it on to the people around you as well as it does to prevent disease and death."
A Healthcare Worker collects swab samples for RTPCR covid 19 tests in Ajmer, Rajasthan, India on May 22, 2021. Photo by Himanshu Sharma/ABACAPRESS.COMTaoiseach Micheál Martin says reopening has clearly caused greater spread of the disease.
"We have reopened society, the economy has bounced back."
"Those of the positives in terms of thousands and thousands people coming back to work."
"In terms of enterprise that might have thought they didn't have a future a year ago, back up and running."
"But it is having an impact in terms of the delta variant being transmissible."
He says it's impacting health services across Europe and the world, and we have to be "very mindful of that."
"The Taoiseach has also said he can never rule out taking measures to reduce the impact."
