West Virginia held its first lottery-style drawing for those who received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, which is designed to boost the state’s vaccination numbers.
Over the weekend, Gov. Jim Justice announced the winners. Karen Foley, of Mineral Wells, received the state’s $1 million prize. Other prizes included pickup trucks, college scholarships, lifetime hunting licenses, lifetime fishing licenses, custom hunting rifles and shotguns and weekend getaways.
West Virginia will hold a lottery drawing every week through Aug. 4 with the same prizes. The final drawing will include a prize of $1.588 million and a second-place prize of $588,000. Any person who received at least one dose of the vaccine is eligible to register for the drawing.
Some policy groups supported the governor’s drawing as a means to boost vaccination rates in the state, but other groups criticized it as a waste of taxpayer money and said it would be more effective to use funding on other approaches, such as education about the vaccines and increased availability.
The state met its goal to get 85% of those older than 65 years old vaccinated. As of the most recent numbers, 85.4% have received at least one dose of the vaccine and nearly 76% have been fully vaccinated. However, the governor fell short of his June 20 goal for the general population. Only about 61.5% of the eligible population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, short of the governor’s goal of 65%. Nearly 51% have been fully vaccinated.
