MORGANTOWN – Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday that 246,200 people have signed up for the Do it for Babydog vaccine incentive lottery.
The drawing for the various prizes will be done Saturday, June 19, and winners will be notified that day – though not necessarily be told what they won – so that they can attend the West Virginia birthday celebration Sunday, when the winners will be publicly announced.
Registration for Saturday’s first round of prizes is over but residents who’ve had at least their first COVID vaccine dose can keep registering for subsequent weekly drawings. A new $1 million prize will top the list of prizes available each week, he said.
The Call to Arms $100 gift card/savings bond vaccine incentive program for ages 16-15 will end at 11:59 p.m. Saturday, Justice said. That’s when the last registrations will be accepted.
“It was semi successful,” he said; 39,000 people registered for the $100 award.
COVID-19 Czar Clay Marsh urged people not to become complacent, citing results of two recent studies.
One, performed across a single hospital system, showed that people – even otherwise healthy people – who get infected can suffer long-term consequences. Conducted from February through December 2020, it showed that half the people hospitalized for COVID still experienced some side effects 30 days after diagnosis, he said.
And more than 25% of those not hospitalized had at least one long-term symptom, he said.
The other study occurred in Scotland, where the new Delta variant, from India, attacked even affluent people who have more health care resources.
He reiterated that the Delta variant is more infectious than any other and more able to evade immune system responses. In the U.S., it makes up 10% of all COVID cases, doubling every 10-14 days, and will be most common form in next two to three weeks.
So far, he said there have been only three West Virginia cases, and all the people from that group were isolated. But it will come and spread and become the most common strain here, too.
The Delta variant, he said, is twice as likely to put someone in the hospital as the UK variant, which is the most common U.S. version. It’s 40%-50% more infectious than the UK strain, which in turn is 40%-60% more infectious than the original strain introduced into the U.S. through Washington state. And it infects children more readily than the UK strain.
“That’s really a concern because of the number of people still not vaccinated,” he said. And the United Kingdom learned that just a single dose of one of the two-doses vaccines isn’t effective against Delta.
In other news, Justice said he’ll be calling for another special session on Friday, June 19, to be held on June 24. He’ll announce the items on the call on Friday; they will involve appropriating another $250 million of revenue surplus
“We have a tremendous surplus and we absolutely want to put that to good use,” he said.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
