DALLAS — Both federal and local health experts have raised Dallas County’s COVID-19 alert levels as the highly contagious COVID-19 variant BA.5 causes both case counts and hospitalizations to climb.
Dallas County moved its internal COVID-19 risk level to orange, or “extreme caution,” on Saturday, just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention designated Dallas, Tarrant and Collin counties as having high community spread of the virus on Thursday.
BA.5, an omicron subvariant that is now the dominant strain in the U.S., appears to cause less severe illness than its predecessors, although some people are still at risk, including those who are immunocompromised or over the age of 65.
