Check Your Voicemails: 247 Winners In WA's 4th Vaccine Lottery

OLYMPIA, WA — The fourth of five lottery drawings for vaccinated Washingtonians took place Tuesday morning, randomly selecting 247 adult winners, including one lucky person that will receive $250,000.

Each winning number is picked from millions assigned to each person in the Department of Health's statewide Immunization Information System. After the drawing, the lottery works with health officials to match the numbers with their corresponding names and contact information.

The June 29 drawing included 4,058,453 adults, up more than 40,000 from the week before, and 154,297 more people than were in the system when the first drawing took place on June 8.

Here are the prizes that were up for grabs Tuesday:

• One $250,000 cash prize
• One pair of concert tickets for Climate Pledge Arena
• Five Nintendo Switch packs
• 20 Washington State Parks camping gift cards
• 20 Fish & Wildlife "Wild Bucks" vouchers
• 25 Amazon Echo Dots
• 75 Microsoft Xboxes
• 100 Discover Passes

Each prize must be claimed within 72 hours of the state's first attempt to contact the winner. For the latest drawing, officials will begin contacting each winner Wednesday, starting with phone calls to the numbers on record, followed by texts and e-mail attempts. The lottery also draws an alternate winner for the large cash prize, in case the original winner fails to claim the prize in time.

With dozens of smaller prizes going unclaimed each week, lottery officials have a few tips to make sure people do not miss out on their winnings:

• Officials calling from the lottery will most often have a 253 area code, but some phones will have a 564 number — the state's newest area code. Official prize emails will originate only from an address ending in "@doh.wa.gov."
• Winners have 72 hours to claim their prize, and the clock starts ticking as soon as the first call attempt happens. As the deadline nears, officials will also attempt to text winners, and send an e-mail if their address is on file.
• Washingtonians seeking help verifying that their vaccination records are in the state's database can call the COVID-19 hotline at 1-833-VAX-HELP.
• Beware of scammers: The state received some reports of scammers posing as lottery officials. The Attorney General's office shared several tips to avoid scammers Monday and encourages anyone suspicious of a call, text, or e-mail to contact the Washington State Lottery at 360-810-2888 to verify authenticity.

The fifth and final "Shot of a Lifetime" drawing happens in two weeks, on July 13. All of the unclaimed prizes from previous drawings will be back in rotation, and one Washingtonian will claim the $1 million grand prize.

The lottery promotion was part of a statewide package of incentives meant to encourage more Washingtonians to get vaccinated and allow the state to reopen earlier than the June 30 target date. While the state fell short of the 70 percent metric needed to lift restrictions ahead of schedule, the Department of Health's latest available data showed Washington roughly one point shy of the mark heading into Wednesday's reopening.