GOVERNOR HOGAN: Good afternoon, everybody. Joining me today are Maryland lottery and gaming director Gordon Medenica and Maryland’s health secretary Dennis Schrader and the lotto ball. You guys weren’t expecting that, were you? We’ve been working around the clock as part of a massive all‑hands‑on‑deck to make sure every Marylander who wants a COVID‑19 vaccine can get access to one as quickly as possible. Our mission is to ensure that no arm is left behind, and we’re committed to leaving no stone unturned, and we’re using every resource at our disposal to achieve that goal.
Here in Maryland, we’re already on our way to becoming one of the most vaccinated states in the country. But we want to thank the millions of Marylanders who have gotten vaccinated, and provide an even greater incentive for more Marylanders to go out and get their shot.
Today, we’re announcing an exciting partnership between the Maryland Lottery and the Maryland Department of Health to provide $2 million in prize money for Marylanders who get vaccinated. Beginning next Tuesday, May 25th, the Maryland Lottery will randomly select and award a $40,000 prize each and every day to a vaccinated Marylander. We’ll continue to do this every day for 40 straight days through July 3rd. That’s 40 drawings over 40 days for a chance to win $40,000 each day.
And on the 4th of July, a final drawing will be held to award one lucky vaccinated Marylander a grand prize of $400,000. So it’s a total of $2 million in prize money for vaccinated Marylanders. Entry is very simple. All you have to do is get vaccinated for COVID‑19 here in Maryland, be a Maryland resident, and be 18 or older. Anyone 18 and older who’s already been vaccinated for COVID‑19 in the state of Maryland at any time is also eligible for these prizes and will automatically will entered to win.
If you’ve not been vaccinated yet, the sooner you do, the sooner you get your shot, the more lottery drawings you will be eligible for. All winners will be notified by the Maryland Department of Health, and all funding is being provided from the Maryland Lottery’s marketing fund. Once again, all you have to do to enter the drawing is to get your shot.
Promotions like this are just one more way that we’re reinforcing the importance of getting every single Marylander we can vaccinated against COVID‑19.
Earlier this month, we announced a financial incentive for state employees who elect to receive the COVID vaccine, and last week, Leidos Pizza announced they’re giving free pizza to everyone who’s received their shot in the state of Maryland during the months of May and June. We’re strongly encouraging other businesses across the state to also consider offering incentives as well. As of today, the state of Maryland has administered more than 5.7 million COVID‑19 vaccines. We vaccinated more than 87 percent of all Marylanders over 65 and more than 67 percent of all Marylanders 18 and older.
Maryland is vaccinating at a faster rate than the nation, faster than most other states, and we’re focused on reaching 70 percent of all adults vaccinated by Memorial Day weekend. Thanks to the massive vaccine infrastructure we’ve built, it’s easier than ever to find and receive a vaccine at more than 3,000 different locations. We now have 706 pharmacies and 366 doctors’ offices providing vaccines. Our 13 max vax sites remain open and operational, with no appointment needed. Opportunities where you can simply walk up or drive through to get your vaccine immediately. It’s clearer than ever that these vaccines are extremely effective.
Today, our seven‑day positivity rate is 2.06 percent, the lowest it’s ever been during the entire pandemic. And the eighth lowest in America. Our daily positivity rate is 1.31, which is also the lowest it’s ever been since the beginning of this pandemic. Our case rate is now 5.5 per 100,000, which is only a quarter of what it was a month ago. 75 percent decline. It’s the lowest it’s been since April 4th, and our case rate is now the sixth lowest in the nation.
Our transmission rate is the third lowest in the country, and hospitalizations are dropping every single day from a high of 1,952 to less than 600. Down 72 percent. Now, I know that there are Marylanders who have been hesitating, or who just haven’t gotten around to it yet. But the only way to protect yourself against COVID is to get vaccinated right away. So those of you who are still on the fence, who just haven’t gotten your shot yet, there’s no better time than now, and there should be no more excuses. So go out and get vaccinated to protect yourself, your family, your friends, and your fellow Marylanders.
Please get vaccinated so that we can all finally get back to our normal lives. And if you needed one more good reason than just going out and get vaccinated for your chance to win a share of this $2 million. So remember, Maryland, get your shot for a shot to win. Get your shot for a shot to win. And so now I’m going to turn it over to Gordon Medenica, our Maryland Lottery and Gaming Director to provide more details about how the vaccine lottery is going to be conducted. Gordon?
GORDON MEDENICA: Thank you, Governor Hogan. I have to especially thank the Governor For bringing us into what may be one of the most creative lottery promotions that we’ve certainly ever done. And we couldn’t be happier to scramble on relatively short notice to put this all together. But then again, we’re in the business of giving away money. So this promotion is going to be good for the lottery, but much more importantly, it’s going to be good for the state of Maryland, and everybody is a winner, because if you get vaccinated, of course, that contributes to the general health of everyone. We just couldn’t be more pleased to conduct this promotion.
The Governor pretty much explained how it works. It’s pretty simple, although there’s a lot of work going on in the background to make sure we get this right. For example, the Department of Health has very secure databases of people who have been vaccinated. We don’t want to know anyone’s name. We very much respect the privacy and sanctity of that database and don’t want to go there.
The way we structured this is the Department of Health will simply run number in the database. We will crank out a winner every day. Then the Department of Health will contact that winner by using the number to locate that file and that winner will have to get a signed authorization. Because we can understand that perhaps some people don’t want any record of themselves to be released. When we get that name and contact information, we at the lottery will contact that person and go through the normal winner claim process.
Again, as we’ve said, in Maryland, of course, lottery winners are allowed to stay anonymous. So there’s protection on that end for people who don’t want their names to be revealed. However, we would very much enjoy it if at least some of our winners will allow us to celebrate with them, their lucky streak.
Then certainly, as the Governor said, at the end of the 40 days, there’s the really big award of $400,000. And what this does, and we looked at similar promotions across the country is, people who have already been vaccinated also get a chance, and they stay in the drawings every time for 40 days. So this not only encourages new people to get vaccinated and to get into the drawing, but it also rewards those good Marylanders who have already gotten their vaccinations and can continue to then benefit from this very, very fun promotion.
And then, you know, we will hopefully reach all the goals that the Governor has laid out, and we couldn’t be happier, and we will have FAQs, detailed rules, things like that available on our website later today. So for specific questions, we can certainly answer them, but they will also be available to the public almost immediately. Thank you again, Governor Hogan.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Great. We’re happy to take some questions.
(question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We’ve been talking about this for quite a while. We’re trying to figure out when to move forward. They’re in a different situation. We’ve vaccinated 20 percent more than they have there. For them, it was a hail Mary pass to try to get their numbers us. For us, we’re cleaning up and getting close to the goal line. We just think this is going to push us over the edge. Ours is different. I think they have five drawings and we’re going to have 41 drawings. But we think they’re all great ideas, and anything we can do to encourage those last folks. It’s hard to tell, maybe Gordon has sot thoughts on how many. He does more marketing of getting people to do lotteries than I do. But the goal is just to get those reluctant folks or people that just haven’t thought about it, hopefully this will get some attention, and I think they’ll be doing some marketing and we will from our Go Vax from the Health Department, and maybe it will get more people out to get vaccinated so we can finish.
(Question off mic).
GORDON MEDENICA: Ohio is a state about twice our size and again, they have a prize pool of $5 million. We have a prize pool of $2 million. It’s actually pretty close. We think the daily draws, though, will be what really convinces people. So hopefully it will have a substantial effect. But we haven’t tried to estimate the exact number.
(Question off mic).
GORDON MEDENICA: Yeah, well, the odds are easy to calculate. The number of people vaccinated. And each drawing, call it 3 million to 1. Compare to Mega Millions, it’s 300 million to 1. And you have 41 consecutive drawings. You’ve got to be in it to win it, as we like to say.
SPEAKER: I’m sorry if this is a dumb question, but where is the money coming from?
GORDON MEDENICA: The whole prize pool is coming from the Lottery marketing budget. This was money that we allocated to spend. We do a lot of media advertising, but we also do a lot of promotions. And we think there’s a tremendous benefit for the lottery itself. We spoke to the folks in Kentucky who have a similar program, and early anecdotal evidence suggests that they already more than covered the cost of the promotion in media exposure. We think it’s just a win‑win program, which is why we’re so excited about it.
(Question off mic).
GORDON MEDENICA: We’re going to use a computer random number generator. For example, racetracks and keno games that go up every four minutes in a lot of shops, those are all done by random number generation. All of our second chance drawings, we have a lot, for people who bought scratch‑off tickets and enter them for secondary prizes all those are done by RNG. We have a tested RNG capability already tested within the lottery.
(Question off mic).
GORDON MEDENICA: You have to be a Maryland resident. One shot gets you in.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Maybe I’ll have the Health Department Director address that.
DENNIS SCHRADER: We’re working with the department of budget and management. They put out guidance and basically each employee just has to fill out a form and from there, the Department of Budget and Management will handle the process.
(Question off mic).
DENNIS SCHRADER: Well, we’ve reached over 3.2 million people. That would be wonderful. Another 1.5 million would be exactly where we want to be. But we’ll see.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: It’s a much bigger state, but they were also at a much lower point. I think when they announced they were at 53 percent. We’re at 67.5 percent. So that last group is going to be harder to get, which is why we’re trying to get even more creative.
SPEAKER: Tomorrow the state house reopens, the first time in so long. Is there anything you’re planning to do either officially or privately?
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We’re very excited. We’ve been in there working day and night for the past 15 months, but it’s exciting for me to be able to get people back. It’s a great piece of Maryland history, the first capitol of the United States, ratified the Treaty of Paris. We have great tours that come all summer. We have school kids and other folks. I’m just going to be very happy to see some folks back, and maybe I’ll go down and welcome some of them. I don’t know if I will put on the colonial garb, but I might go down and give the tour.
(Question off mic)
GOVERNOR HOGAN: If you get vaccinated on July 3rd, you will have a chance on 4th of July. (Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: That’s an easy question. You just enter one time whether you get one shot or two shots. Were you thinking of getting a third or fourth shot to get more chances to win? It doesn’t work that way. Any other questions?
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I have never thrown an ax before, and I saw 20 kind of young people that were bouncing them off the wall and they were laying on the floor for half an hour. I went up. They said stand here, here’s how you throw it. First one hit the bull’s eye but didn’t stick because I had a little bit too much rotation. Second one, bull’s eye. I decided to quit and walk off because I would probably have to do 2,000 more to hit it again.
They actually took the thing off the wall. Left the ax in it and I autographed it and now it’s going to be on the wall of the restaurant. Thank you guys very much.
Here in Maryland, we’re already on our way to becoming one of the most vaccinated states in the country. But we want to thank the millions of Marylanders who have gotten vaccinated, and provide an even greater incentive for more Marylanders to go out and get their shot.
Today, we’re announcing an exciting partnership between the Maryland Lottery and the Maryland Department of Health to provide $2 million in prize money for Marylanders who get vaccinated. Beginning next Tuesday, May 25th, the Maryland Lottery will randomly select and award a $40,000 prize each and every day to a vaccinated Marylander. We’ll continue to do this every day for 40 straight days through July 3rd. That’s 40 drawings over 40 days for a chance to win $40,000 each day.
And on the 4th of July, a final drawing will be held to award one lucky vaccinated Marylander a grand prize of $400,000. So it’s a total of $2 million in prize money for vaccinated Marylanders. Entry is very simple. All you have to do is get vaccinated for COVID‑19 here in Maryland, be a Maryland resident, and be 18 or older. Anyone 18 and older who’s already been vaccinated for COVID‑19 in the state of Maryland at any time is also eligible for these prizes and will automatically will entered to win.
If you’ve not been vaccinated yet, the sooner you do, the sooner you get your shot, the more lottery drawings you will be eligible for. All winners will be notified by the Maryland Department of Health, and all funding is being provided from the Maryland Lottery’s marketing fund. Once again, all you have to do to enter the drawing is to get your shot.
Promotions like this are just one more way that we’re reinforcing the importance of getting every single Marylander we can vaccinated against COVID‑19.
Earlier this month, we announced a financial incentive for state employees who elect to receive the COVID vaccine, and last week, Leidos Pizza announced they’re giving free pizza to everyone who’s received their shot in the state of Maryland during the months of May and June. We’re strongly encouraging other businesses across the state to also consider offering incentives as well. As of today, the state of Maryland has administered more than 5.7 million COVID‑19 vaccines. We vaccinated more than 87 percent of all Marylanders over 65 and more than 67 percent of all Marylanders 18 and older.
Maryland is vaccinating at a faster rate than the nation, faster than most other states, and we’re focused on reaching 70 percent of all adults vaccinated by Memorial Day weekend. Thanks to the massive vaccine infrastructure we’ve built, it’s easier than ever to find and receive a vaccine at more than 3,000 different locations. We now have 706 pharmacies and 366 doctors’ offices providing vaccines. Our 13 max vax sites remain open and operational, with no appointment needed. Opportunities where you can simply walk up or drive through to get your vaccine immediately. It’s clearer than ever that these vaccines are extremely effective.
Today, our seven‑day positivity rate is 2.06 percent, the lowest it’s ever been during the entire pandemic. And the eighth lowest in America. Our daily positivity rate is 1.31, which is also the lowest it’s ever been since the beginning of this pandemic. Our case rate is now 5.5 per 100,000, which is only a quarter of what it was a month ago. 75 percent decline. It’s the lowest it’s been since April 4th, and our case rate is now the sixth lowest in the nation.
Our transmission rate is the third lowest in the country, and hospitalizations are dropping every single day from a high of 1,952 to less than 600. Down 72 percent. Now, I know that there are Marylanders who have been hesitating, or who just haven’t gotten around to it yet. But the only way to protect yourself against COVID is to get vaccinated right away. So those of you who are still on the fence, who just haven’t gotten your shot yet, there’s no better time than now, and there should be no more excuses. So go out and get vaccinated to protect yourself, your family, your friends, and your fellow Marylanders.
Please get vaccinated so that we can all finally get back to our normal lives. And if you needed one more good reason than just going out and get vaccinated for your chance to win a share of this $2 million. So remember, Maryland, get your shot for a shot to win. Get your shot for a shot to win. And so now I’m going to turn it over to Gordon Medenica, our Maryland Lottery and Gaming Director to provide more details about how the vaccine lottery is going to be conducted. Gordon?
GORDON MEDENICA: Thank you, Governor Hogan. I have to especially thank the Governor For bringing us into what may be one of the most creative lottery promotions that we’ve certainly ever done. And we couldn’t be happier to scramble on relatively short notice to put this all together. But then again, we’re in the business of giving away money. So this promotion is going to be good for the lottery, but much more importantly, it’s going to be good for the state of Maryland, and everybody is a winner, because if you get vaccinated, of course, that contributes to the general health of everyone. We just couldn’t be more pleased to conduct this promotion.
The Governor pretty much explained how it works. It’s pretty simple, although there’s a lot of work going on in the background to make sure we get this right. For example, the Department of Health has very secure databases of people who have been vaccinated. We don’t want to know anyone’s name. We very much respect the privacy and sanctity of that database and don’t want to go there.
The way we structured this is the Department of Health will simply run number in the database. We will crank out a winner every day. Then the Department of Health will contact that winner by using the number to locate that file and that winner will have to get a signed authorization. Because we can understand that perhaps some people don’t want any record of themselves to be released. When we get that name and contact information, we at the lottery will contact that person and go through the normal winner claim process.
Again, as we’ve said, in Maryland, of course, lottery winners are allowed to stay anonymous. So there’s protection on that end for people who don’t want their names to be revealed. However, we would very much enjoy it if at least some of our winners will allow us to celebrate with them, their lucky streak.
Then certainly, as the Governor said, at the end of the 40 days, there’s the really big award of $400,000. And what this does, and we looked at similar promotions across the country is, people who have already been vaccinated also get a chance, and they stay in the drawings every time for 40 days. So this not only encourages new people to get vaccinated and to get into the drawing, but it also rewards those good Marylanders who have already gotten their vaccinations and can continue to then benefit from this very, very fun promotion.
And then, you know, we will hopefully reach all the goals that the Governor has laid out, and we couldn’t be happier, and we will have FAQs, detailed rules, things like that available on our website later today. So for specific questions, we can certainly answer them, but they will also be available to the public almost immediately. Thank you again, Governor Hogan.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Great. We’re happy to take some questions.
(question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We’ve been talking about this for quite a while. We’re trying to figure out when to move forward. They’re in a different situation. We’ve vaccinated 20 percent more than they have there. For them, it was a hail Mary pass to try to get their numbers us. For us, we’re cleaning up and getting close to the goal line. We just think this is going to push us over the edge. Ours is different. I think they have five drawings and we’re going to have 41 drawings. But we think they’re all great ideas, and anything we can do to encourage those last folks. It’s hard to tell, maybe Gordon has sot thoughts on how many. He does more marketing of getting people to do lotteries than I do. But the goal is just to get those reluctant folks or people that just haven’t thought about it, hopefully this will get some attention, and I think they’ll be doing some marketing and we will from our Go Vax from the Health Department, and maybe it will get more people out to get vaccinated so we can finish.
(Question off mic).
GORDON MEDENICA: Ohio is a state about twice our size and again, they have a prize pool of $5 million. We have a prize pool of $2 million. It’s actually pretty close. We think the daily draws, though, will be what really convinces people. So hopefully it will have a substantial effect. But we haven’t tried to estimate the exact number.
(Question off mic).
GORDON MEDENICA: Yeah, well, the odds are easy to calculate. The number of people vaccinated. And each drawing, call it 3 million to 1. Compare to Mega Millions, it’s 300 million to 1. And you have 41 consecutive drawings. You’ve got to be in it to win it, as we like to say.
SPEAKER: I’m sorry if this is a dumb question, but where is the money coming from?
GORDON MEDENICA: The whole prize pool is coming from the Lottery marketing budget. This was money that we allocated to spend. We do a lot of media advertising, but we also do a lot of promotions. And we think there’s a tremendous benefit for the lottery itself. We spoke to the folks in Kentucky who have a similar program, and early anecdotal evidence suggests that they already more than covered the cost of the promotion in media exposure. We think it’s just a win‑win program, which is why we’re so excited about it.
(Question off mic).
GORDON MEDENICA: We’re going to use a computer random number generator. For example, racetracks and keno games that go up every four minutes in a lot of shops, those are all done by random number generation. All of our second chance drawings, we have a lot, for people who bought scratch‑off tickets and enter them for secondary prizes all those are done by RNG. We have a tested RNG capability already tested within the lottery.
(Question off mic).
GORDON MEDENICA: You have to be a Maryland resident. One shot gets you in.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Maybe I’ll have the Health Department Director address that.
DENNIS SCHRADER: We’re working with the department of budget and management. They put out guidance and basically each employee just has to fill out a form and from there, the Department of Budget and Management will handle the process.
(Question off mic).
DENNIS SCHRADER: Well, we’ve reached over 3.2 million people. That would be wonderful. Another 1.5 million would be exactly where we want to be. But we’ll see.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: It’s a much bigger state, but they were also at a much lower point. I think when they announced they were at 53 percent. We’re at 67.5 percent. So that last group is going to be harder to get, which is why we’re trying to get even more creative.
SPEAKER: Tomorrow the state house reopens, the first time in so long. Is there anything you’re planning to do either officially or privately?
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We’re very excited. We’ve been in there working day and night for the past 15 months, but it’s exciting for me to be able to get people back. It’s a great piece of Maryland history, the first capitol of the United States, ratified the Treaty of Paris. We have great tours that come all summer. We have school kids and other folks. I’m just going to be very happy to see some folks back, and maybe I’ll go down and welcome some of them. I don’t know if I will put on the colonial garb, but I might go down and give the tour.
(Question off mic)
GOVERNOR HOGAN: If you get vaccinated on July 3rd, you will have a chance on 4th of July. (Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: That’s an easy question. You just enter one time whether you get one shot or two shots. Were you thinking of getting a third or fourth shot to get more chances to win? It doesn’t work that way. Any other questions?
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I have never thrown an ax before, and I saw 20 kind of young people that were bouncing them off the wall and they were laying on the floor for half an hour. I went up. They said stand here, here’s how you throw it. First one hit the bull’s eye but didn’t stick because I had a little bit too much rotation. Second one, bull’s eye. I decided to quit and walk off because I would probably have to do 2,000 more to hit it again.
They actually took the thing off the wall. Left the ax in it and I autographed it and now it’s going to be on the wall of the restaurant. Thank you guys very much.