Coronavirus Today: A shot at $1.5 million

Good evening. I’m Karen Kaplan, and it’s Thursday, May 27. Here’s what’s happening with the coronavirus in California and beyond.

Fellow Californians, if you haven’t gotten your COVID-19 shot yet, what on Earth are you waiting for?

If your answer is a chance to win a $1.5-million jackpot, I have some very good news for you.

Ten lucky — and public health-minded — residents of the Golden State will be selected to receive this pricey payout on June 15, the day the state is scheduled to reopen its economy.

All you have to do to be eligible for this windfall is get a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The multimillion-dollar giveaway is the most audacious effort yet on the part of state health officials to boost California’s flagging COVID-19 vaccination rates. According to The Times’ vaccine tracker, 53.4% of state residents have received at least one dose of vaccine. That means 46.6% have not.

Some of those people aren’t eligible. People who are allergic to the vaccines shouldn’t take them, and patients with autoimmune disorders or certain other medical conditions might reasonably decide to skip them too. Plus, you have to be at least 12 years old to get the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the only one authorized for use in minors.

That still leaves millions of Californians who haven’t gotten vaccinated yet but might be swayed or prodded if the right incentive comes along. If a chance to become a millionaire isn’t one of them, how about a bigger chance at a lesser prize ($50,000), or a guaranteed $50 supermarket gift card?

In the San Joaquin County city of Lodi, residents who receive their first dose on or after May 6 are also eligible for a $25 credit on their utility bill when they complete their inoculation series. In Santa Clara County, some teens and their families can pocket $10 gift cards from Starbucks or Chipotle and the potential to score a visit to the locker room at Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers.

In Los Angeles County, getting vaccinated could put you in the running for two Lakers season tickets. (That’s the grand prize for a sweepstakes for adult residents who received their first dose last weekend.)

It may sound like a bribe, but L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer sees it as a token of appreciation.

“If there’s a way to help nudge people who are still just waiting to get vaccinated because it hasn’t been the most convenient time or they haven’t had time to schedule it, we’re hoping that these thank-you gifts remind them how important it is to come in,” Ferrer said.

It’s already working in Long Beach. Officials say vaccination appointments have doubled since the city began holding daily drawings for prizes like Apple AirPods and Nintendo Switch game consoles. The incentive program, which began earlier this month, is open to people receiving their first doses.

California isn’t the first state to offer a lottery-style inducement to vaccine laggards. Ohio has grabbed headlines with its “Vax-a-Million” program that offers $1 million to five adults (and full-ride college scholarships to five adolescents and teenagers). New York, Oregon, Maryland and West Virginia are also offering cash prizes of various amounts.

The California incentive program will cost $116.5 million. Gov. Gavin Newsom intends to pay for it with money set aside for pandemic disaster relief, then replenish that account with some of the $27 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds that will be coming our way.

All Californians who have gotten at least one dose will be eligible for the $1.5 million and $50,000 prizes. If you got vaccinated months ago, don’t worry — everyone who’s received at least one dose is already entered in the drawing, state officials say.

It remains to be seen what the rewards might do to boost the number of doses administered in the state. That figure used to average 400,000 a day; now it’s closer to 200,000. With the state less than three weeks away from its planned reopening, time is of the essence.

“We’re doing everything it takes to get Californians vaccinated as we approach June 15 to help us fully reopen safely,” Newsom said.

It’s certainly worth a shot.

By the numbers

California cases, deaths and vaccinations as of 6:34 p.m.:

Track California’s coronavirus spread and vaccination efforts — including the latest numbers and how they break down — with our graphics.

Across California

Our theater critic, Charles McNulty, has a message for the operators of local performing arts venues getting ready for the state’s June 15 reopening: Please don’t let unvaccinated patrons ruin the show.

“I hope that the powers that be at the Music Center will require proof of vaccination for every person wishing to hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall or attend an L.A. Opera production at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or see a play or a musical at the Mark Taper Forum or the Ahmanson Theatre,” McNulty writes.

A vaccination requirement wouldn’t last forever, he says. When coronavirus transmission in L.A. is low enough that COVID-19 is no longer a threat, the doors can reopen for all. That might take a few more months.

But in the meantime, keeping unvaccinated people out of crowded, indoor theaters will help those who are still a little skittish become acclimated to being out in public again.

It’s not really a big ask, McNulty argues. Esteemed universities like Stanford, Yale, UCLA and others are requiring students to be fully vaccinated if they want to return. So are venues in New York City, including Radio City Music Hall and Feinstein’s/54 Below.

People who refuse to get vaccinated are entitled to make their own decisions, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to accommodate them, he adds. “I see no reason why those of us who have driven to a pharmacy in Calabasas in tight pants and out-of-control hair must continue to indulge their selfishness,” he writes. “If they’re going to ride our vaccinated coattails, they can at least play by our rules.”

In Sacramento, the California Legislature has begun weighing more than a dozen proposals to provide a new round of financial help to residents who have suffered economic hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic, my colleague Patrick McGreevy reports.

The assistance could take a variety of forms, including rent relief, stimulus checks and grants for small businesses and entrepreneurs wanting to start new ventures. Programs that are approved would be financed in part through the federal COVID-19 relief funds as well as a historic tax revenue windfall.

Among the ideas under consideration is a plan to provide $600 stimulus checks in the form of tax rebates for Californians who earn up to $75,000 a year. Qualified families with dependents would be eligible for another $500.

Another proposal would offer $1 billion in grants to workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic so they can go back to school or start their own businesses.

Would-be entrepreneurs might be able to apply for micro-grants worth up to $10,000 to create and boost small businesses serving underserved communities, including immigrants and Californians who speak limited English. And thousands of small businesses could get grants of up to $25,000 if an existing program is expanded.

Some of the ideas would address the financial strain that has made it hard for many Californians to pay their bills. For instance, Newsom’s budget calls for providing $2 billion to pay past-due water, electricity and gas utility bills for low-income residents.

The governor has also proposed expanding the state’s rent relief program to pay 100% of back rent accrued during much of the pandemic as well as some months of future rent for low-income tenants as long as money is available. California has already begun paying a portion of back rent if landlords agree to waive some of the money owed.

See the latest on California’s coronavirus closures and reopenings, and the metrics that inform them, with our tracker.

Around the nation and the world

Yesterday, we told you about President Biden’s order to U.S. intelligence agencies to step up their efforts to figure out whether the coronavirus escaped from a lab in China or spread from animals to humans some other way. Today, the Chinese government responded to that directive by accusing Biden of diverting attention away from the “failure of pandemic response in the U.S.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Thursday that the president’s order showed the U.S. “does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing.”

Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, floated the idea that the pandemic began at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which happens to be in the Chinese city where the earliest cases of COVID-19 were detected in late 2019. For months, the new administration minimized that possibility as a fringe theory. But now it’s siding with scientists around the world who are calling on China to be more open about the origins of the global pandemic.

Zhao aimed to redirect attention to the Fort Detrick military base in Maryland. Since the early days of the outbreak, Chinese officials have suggested — without evidence — that the coronavirus was created there and brought to China by American soldiers in the fall of 2019.

“The U.S. side claims that it wants China to participate in a comprehensive, transparent, evidence-based international investigation,” Zhao said. “We would like to ask the U.S. side to do the same as China and immediately cooperate with the World Health Organization on origin tracing research in a scientific manner.”

In more positive news from China, two vaccines made by Sinopharm appear to be safe and effective against COVID-19, according to a study published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The Chinese-made vaccines are already being used in many countries, and one recently won the backing of the World Health Organization for emergency use. But scientists have been eager for more details about their performance.

The trial involved around 40,380 participants and tested the company’s two vaccines — one developed by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and the other by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products — against a placebo. Researchers concluded the two vaccines are about 73% and 78% effective, as Sinopharm has previously claimed.

One independent scientist said the study “does not completely eliminate the doubts” about the vaccines. Jin Dong-Yan, a medical professor at the University of Hong Kong, noted that the island nation of Seychelles has experienced a coronavirus surge despite the fact that a large majority of its population had received one of the Sinopharm shots.

Another COVID-19 vaccine could be heading toward the market at the end of the year.

Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline have launched a large clinical trial to test their COVID-19 vaccine against the original version of the coronavirus that spread from Wuhan and against the variant first seen in South Africa. The trial will enroll 35,000 adult volunteers in the United States, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Production of the vaccine could begin within weeks, the companies said. That way, if regulators authorize the vaccine, it will be ready to distribute in the last three months of the year.

Your questions answered

Today’s question comes from the many readers who want to know: Should I get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine even though I already got the Johnson & Johnson shot?

The steady stream of positive news about the real-world effectiveness of these two COVID-19 vaccines — especially against new coronavirus variants — has prompted a lot of folks to wonder about this. The abundance of vaccine these days also factors into the question.

As things stand, there’s no reason to get re-vaccinated if you’ve already gotten a jab of J&J, said Dr. David Lo, an immunologist at UC Riverside.

The same goes for a reader who said he got the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not authorized in the U.S. but has been available in Canada, Mexico and many other countries.

Lo said there is no evidence that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are any better than the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca offerings.

The vaccines “have a similar benefit, and they all protect you equally from severe disease and hospitalization,” he said.

Chunhuei Chi, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University, agreed.

He said it is a mistake to compare the efficacy of the different types of vaccines in their clinical trials because the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were tested earlier in the pandemic, before more contagious variants were circulating in the U.S. population.

“Johnson & Johnson’s 67% efficacy was the result of facing those more contagious variants that Pfizer and Moderna did not encounter,” Chi said. “That’s why those statistics cannot be compared.”

As for whether it might be worth getting two different types of vaccines anyway — just to be extra safe — Lo said there is not enough research yet to say one way or another.

“I’m not aware of any potential bad outcomes from getting more than one vaccine, but I would not encourage you to get multiple vaccines until we know more about how long protection lasts,” Lo said.

Chi agreed with this too.

“I would advise you to just wait,” he said.

We want to hear from you. Email us your coronavirus questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them. Wondering if your question’s already been answered? Check out our archive here.