Winner of $1 million COVID-19 vaccine lottery prize is Grand Blanc resident

Winner of $1 million COVID-19 vaccine lottery announced

LaTonda Anderson was the lucky Michigander to score the $1 million COVID-19 vaccine prize. A resident from Grand Blanc, MI, she got her shot at Northwest High School in Grand Blanc and plans to donate some of the money and use it for tuition.

LANSING, Mich. - Michigan announced the next series of COVID-19 vaccine lottery winners that had signed up for the MI Shot To Win sweepstakes Wednesday.

This week's winners of the $50,000 prizes were Jenna Basaj of Sterling Heights and Paul Bareno of Rockford.

LaTonda Anderson, a 51-year-old resident from Grand Blanc took home the big prize. She said she got the shot back in March with her husband because it was important to make any contribution she could to getting protected against the virus.

The Lt. Governor was joined alongside Kerry Ebersole-Singh SNL cast member Tim Meadows from Highland Park to announce the winners.

It's the second time the state announced the winners after last week's zoom stream. Three of the four winners of the first sweepstakes were from the Detroit area.

They were Amber Berger of New Baltimore, Adrienne Peterson of Southfield, Christopher Ackerman from Detroit, and Larita Lee.

The sweepstakes were intended to motivate more people to get the COVID-19 vaccine after the rate of first-dose appointments had slowed. The state made millions of dollars available to be won, including one $1 million prize and one $2 million prize for those that have already gotten the shot.

There are also $50,000 daily prizes for those that got their first shot that day.

However, since the lottery began, there's been little movement on the state's vaccine dial. Last week, only 30,000 people got their first shot. The week before that, 28,600 people got their first shot.

Currently, 62.7% of the state has gotten the shot - about 5.075 million residents.

Yet, Michigan needs several hundred thousand more people to get vaccinated before it reaches its unofficial vaccine benchmark of 70% coverage. Another 600,000 people would need to get the shot to meet that mark.

GET REGISTERED: Everything you need to know about the Michigan COVID-19 vaccine sweepstakes

Research has also found that vaccine lotteries don't have much impact on convincing hesitant people to get the shot.