Dr Tony Holohan said it is unlikely that restrictions which were put in place to curb the spread of Covid-19 will be lifted immediately after the Easter weekend.
"At this moment in time, we are not anticipating a recommendation later in the week that we should lift the measures that are in place," the chief medical officer said at a briefing on Tuesday.
"We will give further assessment to that as the week goes on.
"We do want to see what I would describe as the full benefit of the measures that were put in place in particular towards the end of the week before last - the Friday measures that restricted the amount of movement the population, that limited us in terms of workplace participation to only essential workers.
"As we get closer to the end of the week, we'll be in a much better position to make that formal assessment ahead of the 12th."
There were a further 36 deaths from Covid-19 announced today, taking the total to 210. The total number of confirmed cases is now 5,709.
An American study which was published earlier on Tuesday suggested that Ireland has passed the peak of Covid-19 cases. Holohan described that study as "not reliable".
"I'm aware of it and it simply isn't true," he said.
"It's not reliable. That's not something that people should either listen to or rely upon."
Dr Ronan Glynn, also speaking at the briefing, added regarding that study:
"From what we can tell, that model is not really a model, to be honest," said Glynn.
"It just took existing case data and basically suggested that because things seemed to have stabilised over a short number of days that perhaps we have reached a peak.
"It doesn't take into account any change that might happen over the coming days. It doesn't take into account the fact that we're reporting the highest number of deaths to date this evening.
"It's very important that people wouldn't take undue store from what was said in that work in America. It would lead to undue complacency at a time when we certainly can't afford that."
