The city has now made 250,000 New Yorkers $100 richer with its Benjamins-for-shots vaccine incentive, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.
The figure has risen by 85,000 since Sept. 15, when the Big Apple had doled out 165,000 gift cards to Big Apple residents receiving their first jabs.
“Since we started the $100 incentive, a quarter-million New Yorkers have taken advantage of it, 250,000 New Yorkers who got their first coronavirus vaccine dose,” he said during his morning press briefing, held remotely from City Hall. “That’s a staggering number.”
The mayor noted that 45 percent of people who have reaped the benefits of the so far $25 million, publicly funded initiative are Latino — and that 40 percent of recipients have been young, specifically between the ages of 18 and 35.
“The whole idea was to reach people who weren’t getting reached, and it worked like a charm,” he said. “[It caused] a massive amount of uptake, making people safer.
“We know when we put out the idea for the $100 incentive, it just caught like wildfire,” he boasted. “You could just tell. People heard it, it made sense to them, it gave them an incentive.”
“The whole idea was to reach people who weren’t getting reached, and it worked like a charm,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Brendan McDermid/REUTERS
Mayor Bill de Blasio noted that 45 percent of people who have reaped the benefits of the publicly funded initiative are Latino and 40 percent of recipients have been younger New Yorkers. Mark Lennihan/APIn late July, de Blasio announced that New Yorkers who got their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine series would have the opportunity to be gifted $100 in a pre-paid card. In turn, President Biden encouraged localities to implement the same incentive program.
