Hogan announces COVID-19 booster lottery

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced on Tuesday that the state would be conducting a COVID-19 booster lottery with cash prizes totaling $2 million as an incentive to get Marylanders to receive their extra coronavirus shots. 

The lottery, the first drawing of which starts next Tuesday, will allow any Maryland resident aged 18 years and older who has received their initial vaccine doses and booster shot in the state to enter for a chance to win thousands of dollars. 

The first lottery next Tuesday will be a $500,000 drawing, and the lottery will include 12 drawings with cash prizes totaling $2 million.

The 10 weeks following the initial drawing, residents will get the chance to $50,000 each week. A final lottery drawing on May 3 will give one Maryland resident the chance to win $1 million. Participants do not need to register for the lottery.

“The biggest takeaway from the Omicron surge is just how critically important it is to get a booster shot,” Hogan said in a statement. “It is clear that getting fully protected with a booster is the single most important thing you can do right now to minimize the impact of COVID-19 and its variants and to help us all finally move on from this pandemic.”

Hogan’s announcement is a part of a larger initiative that the state is doing to encourage residents to get their booster shots. Other aspects of the initiative include using hospital-testing sites as another place people can go to to receive their boosters and doing outreach to residents about getting their booster shots by email and phone call.

Slightly less than 50 percent of Maryland residents aged 12 years and older have received their booster shot, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the percentage only shifts slightly upward to 51 percent for residents aged 18 years and older.

Early last month, the CDC endorsed allowing people aged as young as 12 years old to receive their booster shot. 

“This booster dose will provide optimized protection against COVID-19 and the Omicron variant. I encourage all parents to keep their children up to date with CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations,” CDC Rochelle Walensky said in a statement at the time.

Governors from states like Ohio, New York and Oregon have previously used COVID-19 lotteries as a way to encourage Americans to get their vaccine doses.