Use Countif and ?? to count occurrences of text string in a column

Hello,

I am wondering if it is possible (without using a helper column) to match data in a string and then count the number of occurrences. I have a column of text strings (over 3K rows right now) and I want to count how many times 19 occurs in the 3rd and 4th position of the string. I can add a helper column where I pull out the 3rd and 4th characters and then count the occurrences then but this sheet will increase in size each week by about 200 rows and I don't want to have to copy/paste the MID() function every week in a helper column.

Thank you!

SUMPRODUCT worked perfectly! Thank you very much!!!!!