249 Winners Drawn During Washington's 1st Vaccine Lottery

OLYMPIA, WA — The first of five "Shot of a Lifetime" lottery drawings took place Tuesday morning, and the state is working to identify and contact all 249 vaccinated winners.

Anyone who has received a dose of any COVID-19 vaccine in Washington is automatically eligible to win prizes. The winning numbers are randomly selected by the lottery, then matched with a corresponding name from the state's immunization database by the Department of Health.

Dan Miller, a spokesperson for the lottery, told Patch Wednesday afternoon that officials had successfully reached the person who won $250,000 and expected them to formally submit a claim Thursday, then decide whether to talk to reporters. The other 248 winners will hear from the state no later than Friday, and many already have. Miller said the lottery teams were leaving quite a few messages and encouraged people to check their voicemails.

Winners have 72 hours to claim their prize after the lottery attempts to contact them, even if the call goes to voicemail. Any unclaimed prizes will be added to the rotation for the fifth and final drawing on July 13.

Here are the prizes awarded in the first drawing:

• One $250,000 cash prize
• One Seattle Mariners suite for up to 14 guests and a food credit good for a game scheduled for Aug. 28
• Two club-level Seattle Seahawks tickets and a parking pass for a future date
• Five Nintendo Switch prize packs
• 20 gift cards for a week of camping at Washington State Parks
• 20 "Wild Bucks" certificates from the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, good for hunting and fishing permits
• 25 Amazon Echo Dots
• 75 Xbox consoles

Publicly announcing all the winners may take a few days, lottery officials told Patch Wednesday, and the timeframe depends on how quickly the state hears back from everyone.

"Since we don't yet know how long it will take to formally contact and verify all 249 winners from [Tuesday's] drawing (some may pick up the phone right away; others may take 71.9 hours), it's difficult to say exactly when we will have official information that we can share, and we've yet to formalize how we'll do that until we know more," Miller said.

As with other lottery prizes in Washington, winners will have a choice between allowing the lottery to "proactively share" their identities or remaining anonymous, although their names are still subject to public disclosure requests. If none of the 249 winners wish to be named, Miller said the lottery could instead release a statement confirming all winners were verified and provide the winners' cities.

Higher value prizes are also subject to taxes, like other drawings. For cash prizes of $5,000 or more, the lottery is required to withhold 24 percent for taxes, meaning the $250,000 winner will actually receive $190,000. Winners for other prizes valued at $600 or more will need to claim the winnings on their 2021 federal taxes.

Gov. Jay Inslee announced the lottery promotion last week as the central piece of a final package of incentives intended to help carry the state past its vaccination goalpost and reopen early. Funding for the more than $2 million in prizes comes from federal relief money appropriated by the legislature.

"We have seen an uptick in appointments for vaccinations since the lottery went into effect," Inslee said Wednesday. "Monday saw the largest single-day number of vaccine appointments booked over the last two weeks."

According to the state vaccination dashboard, Washington is approaching the 64 percent mark for residents 16 and older having at least one dose. Accounting for separate data from the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the actual total is closer to 66.4 percent, Inslee said. That metric needs to hit 70 percent to trigger a reopening earlier than June 30.

Here are the dates for the next four drawings:

• Tuesday, June 15 ($250K + other prizes/youth tuition)
  • Winners contacted between June 16 and June 18
• Tuesday, June 22 ($250K + other prizes/youth tuition)
  • Winners contacted between June 23 and June 25
• Tuesday, June 29 ($250K + other prizes)
  • Winners contacted between June 30 and July 2
• Tuesday, July 13 ($1 million grand prize + remaining prizes)
  • Grand prize winner contacted by the next day