COLUMBUS, Ohio — The first lottery drawing for Ohio’s Vax-2-School scholarship incentive will award $10,000 prizes to 75 vaccinated residents aged 5 to 25, officials said.
What You Need To Know
- The winners being drawn Monday will be announced next week
- Ohio is awarding $2 million in scholarships as a vaccine incentive
- Residents aged 5 to 25 are eligible to enter the Vax-2-School lottery
The Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Lottery are selecting the winners Monday, but the names of the scholarship recipients will not be announced until next week.
In total, $2 million in scholarships will be awarded to vaccinated residents. A second drawing of 75 prize winners will be conducted on Nov. 29. Each day next week, the names of 30 winners will be announced at 3:30 p.m.
The scholarships can be used at an Ohio college, university, technical/trade school or career program, and they will be awarded in Ohio 529 College Advantage plans, officials said.
On Dec. 3 at 7:29 p.m., the state will announce five grand prize winners who will receive $100,000 scholarships.
After announcing the vaccine incentive on Sept. 23, the state waited until now to hold the drawings so that children aged 5 to 11 could enter.
As of Sunday, the deadline for entering the lottery, about 108,000 Ohioans aged 5 to 11, 10.9% of the age group, had been vaccinated, according to state data. For children aged 12 to 17, the vaccination rate was 44.3%, with about 394,000 having received a shot.
Officials said they hope more kids will get vaccinated in advance of a Nov. 28 deadline to be eligible for the second drawing and a Dec. 1 deadline to be eligible for the grand prize drawing.
“Although children are less likely than adults to get severely ill from COVID-19, they become sick – even seriously ill, and can suffer lasting complications from the virus, or even death,” the Ohio Department of Health said in a statement Sunday, noting that 16 Ohio children have died from COVID-19 complications.
The Vax-2-School lottery is the latest vaccine incentive in Ohio, following the Vax-a-Million lottery drawings in May and June, which inspired numerous other states to announce lotteries of their own. Five Ohioans were awarded $1 million prizes and five children ages 12-17 were awarded full-ride scholarships.
The state has also worked with local health departments to make $100 vaccine incentives available in much of Ohio, using federal relief dollars to fund the incentives.