Abbott: Texas hit COVID vaccine milestone after 'key pivots' on eligibility, mass vaccination centers

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Abbott credits Texas for 'key pivots' to improve vaccine distribution process

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott discusses the ramp-up of vaccinations in Texas after a slow start on 'The Daily Briefing.'

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott joined "The Daily Briefing" Friday to discuss how the Lone Star State  became the first in the country to administer one million doses of the coronavirus vaccine. 

Abbott told host Dana Perino Texas had decided to allow all residents 65 and older to receive the first dose of the vaccine and opened up 28 mass vaccination centers that could administer upwards of 4,000 jabs at each location.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT: We were able to make two key pivots that allowed Texas to achieve what we have done now. Importantly, as of today, we have vaccinated more than 1.1 million Texans, and equally important, more than 61% of the vaccines allocated to us have been administered to Texans. 

How were we able to do that? Two key things. One is we changed the strategy before other states and before the United States began recommending that we begin to vaccinate people aged 65 and older. 

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Texas went ahead and made that decision ourselves knowing that it would widen the pool of the people who could be vaccinated, and very importantly, the pool of people who would be most likely to lose their lives because of contracting COVID.

Secondly, we have set up these mass vaccination centers this past weekend, and this week, we have 28 mass vaccination centers across the state of Texas where they are capable of doing 1,000 to 3,000, maybe sometimes 4,000 vaccinations per day at any one particular location...

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We visit with our fellow governors all the time about different strategies, whether it be the vaccines or testing and other things. One thing we have seen through the course of the pandemic is the governors work very collaboratively together. We all learn from each other. We learn best practices and as you can tell from what the Georgia governor was just talking about, the state of Georgia now realizes that expanding to adults age 65 and older is a good strategy to provide more vaccines to more people in each and every state.