A Texas Tribune analysis has found an increase in the number of kindergarteners who don't meet the state requirements for measles vaccines or for submitting paperwork for an exemption.

State clarifies after charter school tells parents of "confirmation of a measles case in a first-grade classroom."

Five of the department’s regional infusion centers have run out of sotrovimab, the only antibody treatment known to be effective against the new variant.

The Texas Department of State Health Services, which tracks the number of coronavirus vaccinations, cases, hospitalizations and deaths across the state, won’t be updating its daily dashboard Friday through Sunday both this week and next over the holidays.

A surge in COVID-19 cases from the West is impacting El Paso.

Federal health officials have informed state officials that a Texas woman has been hospitalized with possible blood clots associated with Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine recipients.

Credit: Evan L'Roy/The Texas TribuneWhat you need to know:Water outages persist as fallout from winter storm continuesThe state’s power outage disaster has firmly transitioned into a water crisis. While there have been reports that dozens of deaths are tied to the storm in Texas, experts say the death toll is likely far larger. — Shawn MulcahyTexas failed to deliver state vital emergency information during stormAs millions of Texans fought to survive brutal winter weather without power and water, Gov. Greg Abbott called for a law and funding to "winterize" Texas’ essential power infrastructure for the kind of extreme cold weather that created multiple crises this week. That’s despite a 2011 winter storm that also caused power outages.

Pharmacist Ilana Druker prepares the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at Houston Independent School District’s Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center on Jan. 9, 2020, in Houston. The winter storm has halted Texas’ urgent and critical COVID-19 vaccination efforts — delaying the delivery of hundreds of thousands of doses that were scheduled to arrive and preventing what might have been 1 million injections by hundreds of providers this week, state health officials said Tuesday. “We're not expecting shipments for this week to arrive until tomorrow at the earliest, and deliveries will be subject to local conditions,” Van Deusen said Tuesday. Ad“Local providers have postponed vaccine clinics because it is not safe for people to be out across much of Texas. “If they can’t store vaccine under the appropriate conditions, we’re asking them to transfer or administer it,” he said.

(Photo by Go Nakamura/Getty Images)AUSTIN, Texas – State health officials have reported more than 300 deaths from the new coronavirus. The Texas Department of State Health Services reported 301 deaths Tuesday from COVID-19, the illness the coronavirus causes, raising the state’s coronavirus death toll for the pandemic to 39,001. The state also reported 12,966 new coronavirus cases Tuesday, bringing the number of Texas cases to just over 2.5 million since the pandemic began. Texas COVID-19 hospitalizations held steady at 9,401, department spokesman Chris Van Deusen said Tuesday. It was updated on Feb. 12 to remove a reference to the 300 new deaths being the most in Texas since mid-January.

Texas is slated for 1.4 million doses allocated through the end of the year. In San Antonio, UT Health San Antonio received 5,800 doses early Monday and plans to begin vaccinating 1,000 health care workers a day starting Tuesday, according to a Tweet by officials at the site. Vaccine doses for the remaining 86 sites will begin shipping later in the week, he said. “We anticipate that over the next 10 days, we will vaccinate approximately 2,900 health care providers that are on the state tiers for priority,” Young said. Disclosure: Dell, MD Anderson Cancer Center and UT Health have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors.

Vaccine doses for the remaining 86 sites will begin shipping later in the week, he said. “Health care workers have been waiting for this day,” said David Lakey, a member of the Texas Medical Association COVID-19 Task Force and chief medical officer of The University of Texas System. Injections could begin as early as Thursday at the University Health System in San Antonio, said Leni Kirkman, the system’s vice president of strategic communications and patient relations. “We’re reaching out to those folks.”A few hours away in Harris County, Roberta Schwartz has been planning for the vaccine’s arrival at her hospital system, Houston Methodist, for months. Schwartz said more than 11,000 medical workers have already signed up, and the system expects to vaccinate between 1,500 and 2,000 people per day.

It also means that each day’s positivity rate will be an oft-changing number, fluctuating as officials collect lab results over time. It marks the latest in a series of data methodology changes and corrections health officials have issued over the course of the pandemic. While touting the new reporting method as an improvement, state officials defended the old system as providing the best information that was available at the time. “As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, so must the data we share,” Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner John Hellerstedt said in a prepared statement. Texas health officials said Monday that the positivity rate is just one of many metrics that inform disease surveillance.

State health officials credit some of the 4,430 new cases to a data entry backlog in Harris County, which accounted for about 1,200 of the recorded illnesses. Then, he changed his mind and blasted local officials in Dallas and Houston for what he and other leaders called overzealous enforcement of COVID-19 regulations. At an April press conference where he talked about plans for reopening the state, Abbott took away local officials' ability to issue fines for violating coronavirus-related orders. Since then, local officials have asked for the ability to enforce orders that mandate people wear face masks in public. But local officials have said Abbott's sending mixed message by encouraging face masks, but not requiring them with an order.

Eddie Gaspar/The Texas TribuneTexas hit a new daily high in COVID-19 cases Tuesday with 2,504 new cases reported, according to data released Wednesday by the Texas Department of State Health Services. The county reported 537 new cases Tuesday, nearly doubling its previous total. Hot spots like prisons have recently started to do mass testing, and the data is not always reported daily. The glitch underscores the provisional nature of this data, Van Deusen said. Several of the state's urban counties also recorded triple-digit increases in new cases Tuesday: Harris County recorded 320 new cases, Dallas County had 298, Bexar County had 180, and Travis County had 161.