Texas ranks near last in COVID-19 vaccination rate
Dose supply, reporting delays, storms blamed
AUSTIN, Texas – In multiple appearances since COVID-19 vaccines first arrived in Texas in mid-December, Gov. Greg Abbott has praised the state’s vaccine rollout. On Jan. 19, he called it a “national model,” and on March 2 he cited the pace of vaccinations as a reason to end his mask mandate and pandemic business restrictions.
What he hasn’t said, however, is that Texas has lagged behind most states in vaccination rates.
According to a USA TODAY analysis of the most recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, only Utah, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia rank below Texas in the percentage of residents receiving at least one vaccine dose. Roughly 17.6% of Texas residents have been vaccinated with at least one dose. A quarter or more of residents in four states have received at least one dose, including neighboring New Mexico.
State health officials blame the low vaccination rates on several factors: the number of doses allocated to Texas by the federal government, reporting delays and February’s deadly winter storms.
“At the end of the day, the amount of vaccine each state gets helps determine how many people are actually vaccinated and how quickly we can do that,” Imelda Garcia, associate commissioner for laboratory and infectious disease services at the Texas Department of State Health Services, told reporters Thursday, adding that the winter storm “had a significant impact on doses being administered.”
“We are a bit behind now because of that winter storm,” she said.
Health experts agree that the winter storms, which all but shut down the state for a week, caused a setback. Vaccine shipments and appointments were delayed across the state, and state health officials reported roughly 1,500 spoiled doses of the vaccine because of power outages and other storm-related issues.
But Texas was a vaccination laggard even before the storm, which health experts and public health activists have attributed to an uneven and unequal rollout across the state. At every turn, Texas leaders have flouted federal guidelines for vaccine eligibility and best practices for an equitable rollout.
State health officials also say the federal government is shorting Texas on doses because vaccines are being allocated proportionate to each state’s 18 and older population according to fiveyear 2018 Census Bureau estimates, and Texas has grown faster than other states since then. Texas also expanded vaccine eligibility to those 16 and older with underlying health conditions, meaning that 18 and older population estimates wouldn’t include every eligible person.
“Working with Texas’ congressional delegation, the governor and his team have repeatedly called on the federal government to stop using this outdated information so Texas receives its appropriate per-capita allocation of vaccines,” Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze told the Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, on Thursday.
Texas health officials and members of Congress from Texas from both parties recently urged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to use more recent population data because Texas is a rapidly growing state.
Two months ago, amid questions about an uneven vaccination rollout, health officials attributed the wide gap in numbers of vaccines allocated to Texas and the vaccines administered to reporting delays – from local health officials to the state health agency to the federal government. Abbott declared the problem all but solved Jan. 13: “We have the structure to vaccinate Texans very quickly,” he said at a news conference. “The only limitation we now face is the limitation of supply.”
Yet state health officials continue to point to reporting delays in explaining why more than a quarter of vaccines shipped to Texas haven’t been administered. In New Mexico, by comparison, 87% of shipped doses have been administered.