$1M Lottery Winner Announced As NC Aims To Up Vaccination Rates

NORTH CAROLINA — A teacher from Winston-Salem and a 14-year-old girl are winners of North Carolina's new cash drawing and scholarship incentive program that state health officials hope will boost the state's lagging vaccination rate.

Shelly Wyramon won the state's first $1 million "Your Shot at a Million Summer Cash Drawing," and Vania Martinez won a drawing for a $125,000 college scholarship.

North Carolinians 18 years and older who have been vaccinated are automatically enrolled in the $1 million lottery drawing. State residents between the ages of 12-17 who have received at least one dose of the vaccine are automatically entered into the "Summer Cash 4 College Drawing," which awards a $125,000 prize to go towards post-secondary education. The incentives are paid for by the state's federal COVID relief funding.

SEE ALSO: NC Set To Award State's First $1M Vaccination Lottery Winner

The awards are the first of four rounds of prizes the state is giving out over the next three months in a bid to add incentive for those who have been hesitant to get a COVID vaccination.

North Carolina officials decided to offer big-dollar prizes as an incentive for vaccinations after seeing the success of similar efforts in Ohio, which spurred "a significant jump" in vaccination rates, Cooper said.

"Some of the other states across the country have begun the process, as we have, and haven't seen that much of a gain yet," Cooper said. "We've got to pull out all the stops to get this done."

As of Monday, about 55 percent of adults in North Carolina had received at least one dose of the vaccine.

"We need to do better here in North Carolina," said North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen. "Areas of our state with low vaccination rates are seeing increased COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and death."

Health officials are amping warnings to those who remain unvaccinated in North Carolina as a new, highly contagious variant of the virus spreads throughout the state.

"The Delta variant of this virus is beginning to infiltrate our state, and is more contagious and dangerous. Our unvaccinated people are vulnerable," Cooper said.

Friday, state health officials announced that Bladen County, which has a vaccination rate of only 33 percent, is experiencing critical viral spread of COVID-19. In less than a month, about 60 percent of the county's cases, including 81 new cases and a death, have all been related to a cluster in one zip code.

As of June 28, at least 13,412 North Carolina residents have died from coronavirus-related illness, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The governor is framing the issue in stark terms.

"We can stop the dying with vaccines," Cooper said.

Last week, President Joe Biden made his first visit to North Carolina since the election to make a vaccination plea.

"This new, dangerous variant that continues to emerge -- it's now the most common variant in America and here," Biden said Thursday evening in Raleigh during a tour of a community vaccination site. "And unvaccinated people are incredibly vulnerable."

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