Employers are again being urged to allow employees to work for home

It comes as the number of close contacts people have rises

The National Public Health Emergency Team says the number of close contacts has risen from 2 in January to 2.6 now.

The reproduction number of Covid-19 has also risen to between 0.8 and 1.1.

Chair of the State's modelling group, Professor Philip Nolan says the increase in the number of people going to workplaces is contributing to the stagnation in daily case numbers:

"Indicators of increased mobility and mixing and indicators that we've got increased close contacts of cases when we're detecting cases, those two changes in the last week of February into the first week of March. To me, there's a direct line can be drawn between those changes and the static number of cases that we're seeing now"