West Virginia is officially paying people to take the COVID vaccine.
The move comes in response to waning interest in the vaccine across the country, as some health departments are being forced to throw out unused doses due to low public interest. As of Sunday, the CDC reported that 95 million people in the U.S. have been fully vaccinated, totaling about 28.5% of the entire national population. About 140 million people – or 42.2% -- have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
That leaves more than half of the country having not received a single dose, as multiple public polls show millions want to delay getting the shot or say they don’t want it at all.
Now, West Virginia is taking a new approach to bribe residents into getting an immunization they may otherwise not want: by offering them money.
According to this, the state plans to use some of its federal COVID relief funding to offer a $100 savings bond to each West Virginian aged 16 to 35 who gets vaccinated, an initiative that could end up costing $27.5 million.
"If we want to really move this needle, and we want to move it right now," Gov. Jim Justice.
Justice added that if the initiative works, "it would be the best money ever spent, like you can't imagine."
While the governor’s office says the incentive could be a way to protect public health and get more people inoculated against a deadly virus, it’s also perhaps the worst form of bribery, forcing hundreds of thousands of low-income West Virginians to choose between money they may need and getting a shot they don’t want.
With a 16% poverty rate, West Virginia’s population at large remains one of the poorest in the nation, sitting at 6th out of all 50 states for highest poverty level.
The governor’s office says that so far, roughly 767,000 West Virginians – about 52% of the state’s entire population – have been given at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, while about 41% have been fully vaccinated.