The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, warned that the COVID-19 infections will likely come back ‘in waves’ after restrictions are eased.

The Taoiseach pointed to Japan who are experiencing a second wave of infection after they began to lift restrictions after a briefing from the Dublin branch of the Civil Defence.

Mr Varadkar has said that a clearer route to restrictions being lifted will become clearer after antibody testing for the virus gets underway.

Mr Varadkar said: ‘This is a new virus, and it’s a virus that we’ve only known about for the last couple of months. The science on it is very uncertain.

‘If you take other pandemics or other similar viruses, they do tend to go around the world in waves. Certainly, the flu virus does.

‘We see, for example, in Japan, who are one of the first countries now experiencing, if you like, a second wave In Hokkaido, which is the big northern Island in Japan, lifted its restrictions three weeks ago and has now had to impose them again,’ said the Taoiseach.

‘Scientists are saying and speculating that this is a virus that will come in waves. That is probably true.

The Fine Gael leader added that we need to begin antibody testing for COVID-19 before we can get a clear picture on the number of people with immunity to the disease.

‘What we have no concept of yet, is how many people have already been exposed to us. We won’t know that until we have an accurate antibody test.

‘There is no accurate antibody test yet. Although Roche and some other companies say they may have that next month,’ said Mr Varadkar.

‘If we get that, that’d be really useful because that will allow us to do a prevalence survey, which will let us know how many people in the country have already been exposed to this virus and have antibodies to fight it,’ the Taoiseach concluded.

Meanwhile, there have been 39 more COVID-19 related deaths recorded in Ireland with an additional 493 cases confirmed, the Department of Health announced on Sunday.