‘I still don’t believe it.’ NC announces first $1 million vaccine lottery winner
Shelly Wyramon, a 45-year-old teacher from Winston-Salem, is the first person to win $1 million for getting a COVID-19 vaccination in North Carolina, the state announced Monday.
Five days after the first drawings, North Carolina has announced the winners of its $1 million prize and $125,000 college scholarship.
Vania Martinez, a 14-year-old from Wilmington, won the $125,000 post-secondary scholarship.
Those entered into the $1 million drawing were 18 or older. For the scholarship drawing the age range was 12 to 17.
Wyramon, a mother of three, encouraged others to get vaccinated. She said she got the shot in order to spend more time with the people she loves, and the children she teaches.
She wasn’t convinced that she had won the $1 million until she was congratulated in a video call from Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
“I was overwhelmed, not believing it,” she said of winning the drawing. “I still don’t believe it. Who believes that you’re going to win $1 million?”
Martinez said she had just started a summer job to save for college when she found out she had won.
“When I first got the phone call, I thought it was a total lie,” she said. “It was exciting, but at the same time crazy.”
She told The News & Observer in a phone interview that she hopes to attend N.C. State University to study criminal law after she graduates high school.
Gov. Roy Cooper and Cohen announced the two winners.
“Thank you for choosing to get vaccinated, and doing your part to help put this pandemic behind us,” Cooper said at the news conference.
Who’s eligible, and odds of winning
Taxes still must be paid on the $1 million, and the $125,000 scholarship does not guarantee acceptance to any college or university.
For both drawings, those entered had to have received at least one dose of the vaccine, either from Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson.
For those vaccinated with their first dose from June 10 to June 20 at midnight, when the entries for the first drawing closed, their names were entered into the drawings twice.
Both Wyramon and Martinez were vaccinated prior to June 10, according to DHHS.
Alternate names were also drawn in case the first ones selected weren’t eligible or refused the prizes. Both of the people chosen in the first drawings were confirmed as winners, so no alternate drawings were needed.
The odds of winning the vaccine lottery are about 1 in 4 million. By way of comparison, the odds of winning the Powerball lottery averages 1 in 11.6 million, according to the N.C. Education Lottery.
The drawings were conducted by the state lottery on a computerized random number generator on a system that did not store any private medical information, The News & Observer reported.
This was the first of four drawings to take place this summer. The next drawing will be held on July 7.
Any resident of North Carolina vaccinated in the state with at least one dose, even those vaccinated prior to the first drawing, will be eligible for the next three this summer.
The only exception are those vaccinated at clinics operated by the U.S. Department of Defense, due to lack of data, DHHS said.
Will the lottery help vaccination rates?
Cooper announced the vaccine lotteries in early June to encourage more vaccinations after the rate of new vaccinations had been dropping for weeks.
As of June 25, 45% of the total population, and 55% of the adult population, have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to DHHS.
Nationwide, that rate is 54% for everyone and 66% for adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cooper said he hoped Monday’s announcement of the lottery winners would encourage more people to get vaccinated.
“We got to pull out all the stops to get this done,” Cooper said. “Whatever brings people in to get their vaccinations, we want to do.”
Cooper also warned those unvaccinated of the delta variant, a mutation of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, that is more transmissible and possibly more dangerous than the first emergence of the virus.
Public health officials have said the delta variant will soon be the dominant strain of the virus in North Carolina and the rest of the country, The News & Observer reported.
“If you are unvaccinated, you should be concerned,” Cooper said.
DHHS reported a COVID-19 cluster in Bladen County on Friday. Officials said the cluster is due to Bladen County’s low vaccination rate, with just 33% of the population fully vaccinated.
It’s unclear, though, if the cluster is due to the delta variant. The latest available data for North Carolina shows that in the three-week period before May 22, 0.7% of cases were from the delta variant.
Cooper to decide on eviction moratorium extension
North Carolina has been under a statewide eviction moratorium since late October, and Cooper said at the press conference that he would announce this week if he plans to extend the order.
The moratorium is currently set to expire on Wednesday.
Cooper’s statewide order was issued in compliance with the Centers for Disease for Control and Prevention’s nationwide moratorium, which has been in effect since early September of last year.
The CDC last week extended that order to July 31, which the agency said would be the last extension.
Both orders only apply to cases of nonpayment in which the tenant has lost income due to the pandemic.
“We are looking at the data. We are looking at what the CDC has done, and I’ll be making a decision this week on whether we extend the moratorium,” Cooper said.
Each time the CDC has extended its nationwide moratorium in the past year, Cooper has extended the state’s order.
In May, North Carolina restarted its rental assistance program, Housing Opportunities and Prevention of Evictions, or HOPE, to assist tenants who have fallen behind on rent due to the pandemic.
“Regardless on whether the eviction moratorium is extended, we think it’s important to get this money out there to keep people in their homes with the lights on,” Cooper said.
The original statewide order was enacted as a way to clear confusion surrounding the enforcement of the nationwide CDC order.
Cooper’s executive order also requires that landlords, before they take an action to evict, provide the tenant with a form they can fill out that attests they are protected from eviction under the moratorium.
But even without the statewide order, North Carolinians behind on rent who have lost income because of the pandemic are legally protected from eviction related to nonpayment until the CDC order expires on July 31.
This story was originally published June 28, 2021 at 10:19 AM.