Starting next Wednesday, adults in Ohio who have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and are at least 18 years old, may enter a lottery that will provide a $1 million prize each Wednesday for five weeks, Fox News reports.
That is part of the unorthodox incentive for Ohioans to get vaccinated Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has come up with.
The pool of names for the drawing will be derived from the Ohio Secretary of State’s publicly available voter registration database, and those who are not in the database can sign up for the drawings on a separate webpage.
Five vaccinated residents who are 17 years old or younger – also randomly selected – will be given full four-year scholarships to any college or university in Ohio, including free tuition, room, board and books.
“I know that some may say, ‘DeWine, you’re crazy! This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money.’ But truly, the real waste at this point in the pandemic—when the vaccine is readily available to anyone who wants it—is a life lost to COVID-19,” the governor was quoted as saying.
DeWine’s announcement comes exactly three weeks before the state’s mask mandate and most other coronavirus-related state orders will end, but the stores and businesses may still require customers to be masked.
“It’s time to end the health orders. It’s been a year. You’ve followed the protocols,” DeWine said. “You’ve done what we’ve asked. You’ve bravely fought this virus. There comes a time when individual responsibility simply must take over.”
The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Ohio did not increase over the past two weeks, going from about 1,522 new cases per day on April 26 to 1,207 new cases per day on May 10, according to Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
More than 4.2 million people in Ohio, or about 36% of the population, had completed the vaccination process as of Tuesday. But the number of people seeking vaccines has dropped. About 42% of Ohioans have received at least one dose.
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