New York Giving Away 50 Fully-Paid College Scholarships to COVID-Vaccinated Teens
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that 50 full college scholarships will be awarded to vaccinated New York teens between the ages of 12 and 17. The winners will be chosen randomly in five weekly raffles and receive funding funding for four years of tuition, room and board, books and supplies.
"If you get the vaccine earlier, you'll have more chances to win because you'll be in the first-week pool, the second-week pool, the third-week pool, the fourth-week pool, et cetera," Cuomo said during a press conference on Wednesday.
Teens who have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine since May 12 will be eligible to register, the Associated Press reported. There is currently no information available on when pool applications will become available, but people can opt into alerts on the New York State website.
In a program running since Monday and ending Friday, New York has also been giving scratch tickets for a $5 million lottery prize to people who receive vaccination doses at 10 specific sites in the state.
For additional reporting on this story, see more from the Associated Press below.
New York administered 788,145 doses in the seven days through Tuesday. That's down from just over 1 million in the seven days ending Tuesday, May 11.
About 45% of New York's 20 million residents are fully vaccinated, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, compared to the national average of 39.5%.
Few minors have been fully vaccinated so far: about 8.7% of people aged 12 to 17, according to state health data shared by Cuomo. That's compared with 37.5% of young adults below the age of 25, about half of people aged 35-54 and 69.5% of those over 75.
