The Show on KJZZ

Listen live weekdays at 9 a.m.

Pima County Seeing Positive Results So Far From Vaccine Incentives

By Rocio Hernandez
Published: Tuesday, June 8, 2021 - 2:43pm
Audio icon Download mp3 (1.05 MB)

After launching incentives to get more people to receive their first COVID-19 vaccine dose last week, Pima County's preliminary data is showing early success. 

The incentives include free tickets to the Pima Air and Space Museum, the Reid Park Zoo and Arizona lottery scratcher tickets. So far, the county has seen good response so far, according to its preliminary data, said county spokesman Mark B. Evans. The county tested this by tracking the number of patients who came to sites on a day when incentives were offered, and a day when they weren't.

“One of the FEMA PODs that was at one of the community college campuses, we did 140 first-dose shots," Evans said. "The next day when we didn’t have any lottery tickets they only did about 30 first-dose shots."

The county saw similar results during a test at a different site, Evans added. 

The effort is targeting people who are on the fence about getting vaccinated. This tends to be young people who are not at-risk of getting severely sick from COVID and are more concerned about potential side effects, Evans said. 

“If we can give them a little extra benefit and say, ‘Get a scratcher, scratch it off, who knows you might win $10,000,'" he said. "If that makes them say, ‘Yeah, OK, why not,’ then we want to do that so we want to make sure that we are not leaving anything on the table.”

As of Tuesday, 44% of Pima County's total population is vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The county will continue offering the lottery tickets all month long.

Coronavirus Vaccines
Listen Now