Summit County announced plans to launch a new lottery-style COVID-19 vaccine plan after its health department flooded with calls and emails about signing up to get the vaccine.
The Summit County Public Health department has received more than 110,000 calls and emails about getting vaccinated.
Director Donna Skoda recently told News 5 Cleveland that the number of people contacting the health department ended up overwhelming the phone system.
So, beginning March 1, Summit County residents can enter into a lottery system to schedule a vaccine appointment.
“We’re going to just use a random number generator and pull out a thousand emails, send out those thousand emails and see how many individuals respond,” Skoda explained.
She said the hope is that eligible Ohioans can register more quickly for the vaccine, according to News 5 Cleveland.
People won’t have to re-register for the lottery in this system, according to the Summit County Public Health department.
Summit County has tracked nearly 40,000 total COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday (February 23).
Statewide, there have been more than 958,000 cases as of Tuesday, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
Find more information and to enter the vaccine lottery, visit the Summit County Public Health website.
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