Ireland will be dealing with Covid-19 for a long time even if a vaccine is developed, the Republic's health chief has said.
Paul Reid warned that the country should plan for subsequent waves of the pandemic.
"Even with a vaccine, the reality is that we will be dealing with Covid-19 for a long time yet," he said.
"We must all adapt our way of life through a combination of behavioural, societal, and healthcare delivery changes."
The chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE) made the comments as he appeared before the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19 Response today.
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"It is increasingly evident that we can expect and should therefore plan for subsequent waves of Covid-19," he said.
"A 'community first' approach to the delivery of care will be central to delivering safe, efficient and effective services through winter and beyond."
He added it would be important to support people to receive care at home or close to home, particularly older people and those people with chronic diseases, and to enhance patient flow and patient experience in our acute hospitals.
Mr Reid also told the committee that all shipments of the flu vaccine are expected to be delivered before the end of October.
"We secured sufficient doses to vaccinate all the at-risk groups," he said.
"This winter, the vaccine will be offered to children aged 2-12 years, delivered as a nasal spray and will be available from GPs and pharmacists from this week."
He added: "A difficult winter season, coupled with a resurgence in Covid-19, is the worst possible scenario for our health services.
"While this is an eventuality that we hope to avoid, it is also a scenario for which we have been carefully planning."
It comes as gardai conducted checkpoints along the border to deter people from breaking level three restrictions in place in Donegal.
He added: "A difficult winter season, coupled with a resurgence in Covid-19, is the worst possible scenario for our health services.
He also told politicians that the HSE's testing and tracing model was currently meeting demand despite the recent surge in cases, and that Ireland was one of the few countries that automatically tests close contacts and conducts serial testing.
"It is important to emphasise that we are meeting all testing demand," Mr Reid said.
To date, more than 1.12 million tests have been completed.
Last week 87,940 tests were conducted and 15,381 contact tracing calls were made, the HSE's highest number to date.
The median end-to-end turnaround time in community settings over the past seven days is two days and 90% of people tested in the community received their result within this timeframe.
Mr Reid said that in a bid to speed up test notification periods, the HSE was looking at additional equipment, robots, and process methodologies to increase its domestic testing capacity and turnaround.
Sinn Féin's David Cullinane said the HSE needed to do better when it came to turnaround times of tests and needed to have much more robust targets.
Mr Reid said the HSE was in the process of recruiting 700 people for swabbing and 500 people for conduct contact tracing.
He said if the virus continues as envisioned they would need more capacity, that they would continue to recruit and the capacity in the laboratories would also be increased.
Fine Gael's Jennifer Carroll MacNeill also appealed for the HSE to improve turnaround times.
She said the testing and tracing model had not been fast enough in respect of schools.
Mr Reid said some 4,328 children and teachers had been tested in the last few weeks and there had been 11 outbreaks around the country in relation to schools since they opened in September.
In total he said 180 children and parents had been named as index cases and another 84 cases had been contact traced from those.
"We are putting a huge focus on it," he added.
"Positively it is keeping our children back at schools and keeping our schools open which is exactly what we want to do."
Asked by Social Democrats TD Roisin Shortall about the full cost of running the test and trace system, Mr Reid told the committee he expected the cost to reach E450 million by the end of this year. Next year, he expects the cost of the service to increase to E700 million.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly is due to appear before the Covid-19 committee tomorrow.
