Ohio ends vaccine lottery after mixed results
Was the first state to offer prizes for being vaccinated.
Despite an initial boom in vaccination uptake due to the prizes available, Ohio has since been unable to get the rate of those vaccinated above 50%.
Around 5 million people, or 47% of Ohio’s population, have completed their vaccination as of this week.
The lottery was first announced on May 12 by Governor Mike DeWine and in the first week of the project, vaccination numbers went up 43% but have stagnated since then.
On Wednesday Gov. DeWine posited: “Clearly the impact went down after that second week.”
However, despite being short lived, the implementation of the state’s vaccine lottery had a material impact on convincing those who had doubts about the vaccine to get their shot.
The winner of the second $1m prize, Jonathan Carlyle said: “When y’all announced the Vax-a-Million, as soon as I heard that, I was like ‘Yes, I need to go do this now.’”
The final winners of the vaccine lottery were revealed on Wednesday. Cincinnati resident Esperanza Diaz won a $1m prize and Sydney Daum of Brecksville won a full college scholarship.
Ohio was the first state to implement the idea of a vaccine lottery but in the weeks following, many states with a low uptake rate introduced a prize draw for fully vaccinated residents.
New York, Louisiana and Maryland have implemented the scheme, with New York having the greatest success in increasing the vaccination rate.
California also adopted a lottery system, awarding $116.5m in prizes, which is the country’s largest prize pot. Governor Gavin Newsom highlighted that California was one of the few states that experienced a week on week increase in vaccination rates. This included a 22% increase in the week before the winners of the grand prizes were announced.
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