“If I could go back and redo anything, it probably would have been to slow down the opening of bars, now seeing in the aftermath of how quickly the coronavirus spread in the bar setting,” Abbott said during an evening interview with KVIA in El Paso.

Abbott added that the “bar setting, in reality, just doesn’t work with a pandemic,” noting people “go to bars to get close and to drink and to socialize, and that’s the kind of thing that stokes the spread of the coronavirus.”

In a subsequent interview with WFAA in Dallas, Abbott reiterated regret over the pace of bar reopenings, calling it an “easy thing to pinpoint” as he looks back on the process.