Gov. Jim Justice is thinking through incentives to encourage even more West Virginians to get vaccinated for covid-19 and to return to work as the pandemic eases.
“I want to revisit with our team,” Justice said at the end of a regular briefing today about the state’s pandemic response. “It seems a crying shame that you have to come up with more incentives to motivate and get more and more and more folks to be able to come out and get vaccinated. But if we get folks vaccinated, can you imagine what we will save?”
“Not only will we save life, but the other thing we will save is the magnitude of this testing cost. It will be off the charts as to what we can save. So when it looks like, well good gosh, why in the world are they doing these incentive things, we shouldn’t have to do it, but it does get us there. And if we get there, the earlier we get there the more we save.”
He said the incentives might be a range of possibilities.
“We’ve got a lot of suggestions for fun-type things and where people can really pick up some neat things, whether they be some kind of prizes or they be real cash,” he said today. “When I come to you next time, I’m probably going to come with a new incentive program to come one notch further.”
So far, 662,813 West Virginia residents are fully vaccinated, according to the state’s coronavirus dashboard.
And 777,579 state residents have received at least one dose of covid-19 vaccine.
State leaders have been trying to encourage younger West Virginians to get vaccinated. Justice’s administration has offered either a savings bond or a gift card valued at $100 for residents between ages 16 and 34 who get vaccinated.
A landing page off the governor’s official website provides two options for those people to choose.
One is a payment card that will be mailed once an application is approved.
The other is registration for a savings bond, which requires an online TreasuryDirect account. With the registered account from U.S. Treasury, people can proceed with the state application for the savings bond. There are instructions on the governor’s online application page.
The online application notes that processing the incentives could take four to six weeks.
Today, the governor estimated about 18,000 people have already registered for the $100 incentive. “But that’s very, very miniscule compared to the number we’re going to get,” Justice said.
The governor has also been discussing an incentive for people coming off unemployment and re-entering the workforce.
“From the standpoint of getting our folks that have been out of work and getting them to step up and get back on the job, we need them really badly,” Justice said. “And for those people that are doing that, they probably need a little bump because they’re going to be losing some of their unemployment benefits.”
At first, Justice considered the possibility of using state covid relief funds to match bonuses being offered by small businesses. But in recent days, the governor has started suggesting many businesses strained by the pandemic can’t afford to offer bonuses of their own.
“I don’t see any reason to put any additional pain on our small businesses at all,” he said. “What I’m trying to do now is just balance how much dollars are available from the state that we can do that as an incentive from the state and not lay any additional burden on our small businesses.”
So Justice said his administration is now considering a government-funded bonus that would not hinge on a match from an employer.
“What I’m looking at now is just to purely do it from the state,” he said.
The governor said more details should be available soon.
“I assure you at the next briefing we’ll have that concluded and we’ll have that in the pipeline and be ready to go.”