Washington – As states work to accelerate the pace of COVID-19 vaccine administration and improve the rocky deployment of shots, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice praised his state for the success of its vaccine distribution. calling it a “rough diamond”.
“Right now, we’re at 98.1%, when it comes to vaccines in people’s arms or the names that are tied to it, you know, that will be put in people’s arms immediately,” he said. the judge, a Republican, in “Face the Nation” in an interview Sunday. “We’re saving all kinds of lives. We’re putting our kids back in school. West Virginia has been the rough diamond that a lot of people have missed.”
Since the coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna were first shipped to states in December, West Virginia has become a leader in vaccine distribution. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 205,000 doses of the shots have been distributed and more than 134,000 doses have been administered in the state.
Justice said West Virginia’s success is due to the fact that “we are people who think practically with a lot of very smart people here to achieve this.”
“Many rulers sat on their hands trying to come up with a system or a formula of what they would do. We didn’t sit on our hands. I mean, we acted,” he said. “We brought in our local pharmacies. We introduced our local health departments, you know. We introduced our National Guard and we started firing into people’s arms, because that’s going through age, age , age “.
Unlike other states, West Virginia refused to participate in a federal program through which CVS and Walgreens administered vaccines to residents and staff of long-term care facilities and instead of this, they relied on local pharmacies to make vaccines. It then became the first state in the nation to finish offering vaccines to all nursing home facilities, doing so before the end of 2020.
Justice said it decided to reject the federal collaboration program because “there are a lot of people who depend on their local health departments, their local pharmacies.”
“If what we’re going to do is create a bureaucracy with federal government guidelines and all, when we know it’s about age, age and age, we have to get shot in the arms of people and every day we put a shot in someone’s arm. we are saving a life, ”he said.
Nationwide, 31.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccine have been distributed and 12.2 million doses have been administered. According to the CDC, more than 10.5 million people have received at least one dose of the shots.