Health officials say new cases of COVID-19 trend downward in East Texas

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - New cases of COVID-19 are trending downward in East Texas, according to NET Health CEO George Roberts.

“At this particular point in time, things are looking pretty good,” Roberts said.

Roberts said new cases of COVID-19 are down from the spike East Texas saw in January and February with the omicron variant.

Although cases are headed in the right direction, Roberts said ”The last couple of weeks we’ve seen a little bit of an uptick over previous weeks, but still in East Texas, our spread category is in the minimal spread category so that’s good.”

All seven counties NET Health covers are in the minimal spread level, meaning that each county has less than 10 people for every 100,000 residents in that county for the last seven days.

“While May’s total is slightly higher than April, we are nowhere near the Omicron spike from January and February of this year,” Roberts said.

So what lead to this downward trend?

“People number one have gotten vaccinated. I also think it’s a lot of people have actually had COVID so there’s some natural immunity along with the vaccination immunity,” Roberts said.

Although cases are down, Roberts said “COVID-19 is going to continue to be with us. I think people are really now learning how to live with COVID. Will there be a wave coming into the future? We don’t know but one of the ways that you can protect yourself is to get vaccinated.”

To see the number of cases in East Texas, click here.

To learn more about vaccinations at NET Health, click here.