In a bid to bolster COVID-19 vaccination rates among children, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz introduced a financial incentive program in January 2022.
The initiative, dubbed "Kids Deserve a Shot," offered a $200 reward to families who ensured their children, aged between 5 and 11, were fully vaccinated.
According to The Post Millennial, Governor Walz, who also serves as the Democratic vice presidential nominee, announced the program via a statement, saying, "Big news: Starting this month, families who get their 5- to 11-year-olds vaccinated can get $200! That's cash in your pocket for starting the year off right by protecting your child from COVID."
The incentive was contingent upon parents or guardians providing proof that their children had received both doses of the vaccine between January 1 and February 28, 2022. The move was a response to the surge in cases of the Omicron variant at the time.
Governor Walz emphasized the importance of vaccination in his statement, noting, "As Omicron surges across our nation, we're continuing to use every resource we have to keep our families safe and healthy. There's a lot of highly transmissible virus circulating in our communities, but getting our children 5-11 years old vaccinated gives them critical protection against severe illness and hospitalization from COVID-19 and helps keep them in school."
This wasn't the first time Walz had used incentives to encourage vaccination. In the fall of 2021, he promoted a program offering students $100,000 scholarships if they received the vaccine, as Breitbart reported.
However, Walz's handling of the pandemic has not been without controversy. In 2020, he established a hotline for residents to report neighbors who were not complying with government-mandated COVID-19 orders, a move that drew significant criticism.
Login