LOS ANGELES >> Californians will be eligible for $116.5 million in prize money for getting coronavirus shots, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday, May 27, a windfall aimed at getting millions more vaccinated before the nation’s most populous state fully reopens next month.
“Look, we’re almost there, ” Newsom said, speaking at Esteban Torres High School Engineering & Technology Academy in Los Angeles. “But we’ve got to incentivize folks. We’ve got to get those first-dose numbers up.”
At stake, Newsom said, was 70% immunity — zeroing in on the much ballyhooed herd immunity — by June 15, the date when Newsom has said the state would lift its now long-standing tier system and allow for a fully reopened economy. But also at stake was the pace of getting back to on-campus learning and an getting back to some semblance of normally, said Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent. Austin Beutner and Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles.
“Everyone enjoys a good comeback story,” Gomez said. “We love them, because we see ourselves in them.”
But that can’t happen without a major final push for vaccinations, he and Beutner said, as they echoed the governor.
“Vaccinations are a crucial piece of that,” Beutner said, after rattling off a list of huge funding beneifits that are allowing his school district to fund a range of measures, from more teachers to more mental health services.
California isn’t the first state to offer vaccine prizes, though its pot of money is the largest, and so is the most valuable single prize: $1.5 million.
With the state’s reopening pegged for June 15, on that day a drawing will be held to award 10 vaccinated people the top prize.
Another 30 people will win $50,000 each, with those drawings starting June 4. Anyone 12 and older who has received at least one shot will be eligible. And the next 2 million people who get vaccinated will get $50 gift cards.
The state estimates about 12 million Californians 12 and older have not been vaccinated. About 63% of the 34 million eligible have gotten shots, though the pace has slowed markedly in recent weeks as infection rates have plummeted to record lows.
Newsom said that last week public health officials began seeing a marked drop in first-dose vaccinations.
“It’s those first doses that are way down,” Newsom said. “So you could see that cliff coming.”
At the same time, state officials were seeing success in other states, where reward programs were in place.
Ohio this week announced the first $1 million winner of its “Vax-a-Million” contest, as well as the first child to win a full college scholarship. Colorado and Oregon also offered $1 million prizes.
New York is raffling 50 full scholarships to children 12 to 17 to public universities and colleges in the state, selecting 10 winners each of the next five Wednesdays.
Newsom said the state also leaned on a study out of UCLA’s Covid-19 Health and Politics Project, which showed that about a third of the unvaccinated population said a cash payment would make them more likely to get a shot.
That California is turning to cash prizes to encourage vaccinations marks a major turnaround from earlier this year, when Californians clamored for shots, with some driving or waiting in line for hours to get one.
“Some Californians weren’t ready to get their COVID-19 vaccine on Day One, and that’s OK. This program is designed to encourage those who need extra support to get vaccinated and help keep California safe,” Dr. Tomás J. Aragón, director of the state’s department of public health, said in a statement.
Newsom’s office said the program would be aimed at reaching people in communities hardest hit by the pandemic — mainly the poor, Blacks and Latinos — though it wasn’t immediately clear how the money would be tailored to fit that goal.
California uses a “vaccine equity metric” to track vaccination progress that splits zip codes into four quartiles from least to most advantaged. Nearly half of people in the least advantaged neighborhoods still haven’t been vaccinated, according to the state.
By contrast, less than a quarter of people in the most advantaged areas haven’t been vaccinated.
Among all Latinos, 57% are not yet vaccinated. That’s the highest percentage of any racial or ethnic group. About 40 % of white Californians are not vaccinated, according to state figures.
Newsom echoed that point on Thursday, noting that large-scale vaccination sites were not attracting large numbers of people in harder-to-reach underserved communities.
“We needed to meet people where they are,” he said, noting that getting the the 20to 30% of the state’s population was relatively easy compared to going from 60% to that more elusive goal of 70%.
Meanwhile, Southern California communities, from Orange County to the Inland Empire, are working in tandem to meet their their vaccination goals.
For instance, in Los Angeles County, while case rates have dropped drastically in conjunction with the vaccine rollout, officials remain concerned about vaccination and case rates in communities of color.
African American residents, at 45 cases per 100,000, now have the highest case rates in the county, which officials say is tied to lower vaccination rates, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. That’s compared to 24 cases per 100,000 among Whites.
“The shift in the highest proportion of case burden being borne by Black residents represents a big change in who is being disproportionately affected by the virus right now in LA County,” Ferrer said.
“What we know for a fact is that the people who are in the hospitals right now are overwhelmingly people who are not vaccinated. The same goes for people who are dying and the same goes for people who are testing positive.”
Staff writer Ryan Carter, City News Service and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
