NORTHERN Ireland had passed the peak in terms of new cases of Covid-19 for this wave of the pandemic, Stormont’s chief scientific adviser has said.
But Professor Ian Young last night warned "we still have a long way to go".
It comes as a further 22 people have died after testing positive for Covid-19, bringing the death toll in the north to 1,498.
Figures from the Department of Health also revealed that a further 1,205 people have tested positive for the virus in the last 24 hours.
There were 751 coronavirus patients in hospitals across Northern Ireland, with 55 in intensive care and 38 requiring ventilation. Hospitals were at 99 per cent occupancy.
A total of 149 care homes were dealing with outbreaks of the virus.
The reproductive rate of the virus - known as the R rate, which measures the infection rate of Covid-19 - has fallen "significantly", according to Professor Young.
The rate had risen to about 1.8 due to Christmas relaxations.
While Professor Young said the R-number for cases of coronavirus was around 1.5-1.9 last week, it has since "passed the peak" and has "fallen to significantly lower levels in terms of cases".
"We still have a long way to go," he said.
He warned that hospital admission rates continue to rise due to the time lag between high case numbers and hospital admissions.
"We expect that to continue for a little longer and pressures in hospitals will not peak until some time in the last weeks in January," he added.
"What we do now is critical to determining how rapidly those numbers fall once they peak, and that's the challenge.
"We can see that the current restrictions work in terms of falling case numbers, we need to make sure that that benefit, that the effort is sustained so that hospital admissions, inpatient numbers, ICU occupancy and deaths will also fall as quickly and steeply as possible towards the end of this month."
Prof Young said the fall in case numbers shows that staying at home works, adding "it must be sustained".
Meanwhile, in the Republic there were a further 46 more Covid-19 related deaths.
Another 3,086 more positive cases of the virus were also confirmed last night.
Figures also showed that 158 people were receiving treatment in intensive care units in the Republic, passing the peak figure reached in the first wave of the pandemic.
There were 128 additional hospitalisations in just 24 hours, with a total of 1,692 people with Covid-19 now receiving hospital treatment.
