COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations remain low in North Texas

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DALLAS - While COVID-19 cases are up in some parts of the country, they are down slightly in North Texas.

There were 263 new cases and two deaths reported Tuesday in all of Tarrant, Collin and Denton counties.

Dallas County did not report its numbers because it is in the process of upgrading the computer system that it uses for the reports.

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There were a few more coronavirus patients in Dallas-Fort Worth hospitals Tuesday. The North Texas hospital region reported 176 confirmed COVID-19 patients, which is up six from the day before.

Doctors believe the slight increase is due to a new strain being seen in other parts of the country.

"What we’re seeing with this new subvariant is that it is even more highly transmissible than the BA.2 and the omicron but thus far we still seem to have protection from the vaccine. The vaccine is very protective against serious illness and hospitalizations and death," said Dr. Philip Huang, the Dallas County Health and Human Services director.

Only about 1.2% of hospital beds in the 19-county region are COVID patients. That’s on the very low end of percentages since the pandemic began.