By Phil Kabler, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gov. Jim Justice said the state’s seven-week, $10 million vaccination incentive sweepstakes will continue, even though it’s failing thus far to spur large numbers of unvaccinated West Virginians to get their COVID-19 shots.
“You could say, well, they’re not terribly successful,” Justice said of the sweepstakes’ failure to significantly increase state vaccination rates. “In all honesty, if we get an additional 500, 1,000, an additional 20,000, how many lives have we saved? How much money, how many hospitalizations? We’ve got to try anything and everything that’s available to us.”
Since Justice on June 1 officially announced the vaccination incentive sweepstakes — featuring weekly $1 million cash prizes, pickup trucks, firearms and other giveaways, culminating with a Aug. 4 drawing for $1.588 million and $588,000 — the state has administered a total of 27,040 doses of COVID-19 vaccine in June, averaging 1,288 doses a day, according to the Department of Health and Human Resources COVID-19 dashboard.
(At its peak in the first week of March, the state was administering more than 20,000 vaccine doses a day.) …
