Oneida County asks for patience amid slow progress with vaccine incentives – WKTV

Oneida County officials are asking people to be patient if they have not yet been contacted about their vaccine incentive.

The county is working with the Prizeout app to award $100 gift cards to anyone who has received a vaccine or booster shot since July 15.

In a post to Facebook Tuesday, the county said the COVID-19 hotline has been overwhelmed with calls from people inquiring about when they will receive their incentives, which is causing outages and long wait times.

Anyone who provided a valid cell phone number or email address when getting their shot will be contacted directly by Prizeout via text or email., according to the county. However, officials say this can take months because the contact information is sent in small batches and there are more than 50,000 to send.

In the post, the county reiterated that only people who do not have a smartphone or email address should call the hotline directly.

PLEASE DO NOT CALL the helpline or any other Oneida County department to inquire about why you haven't received this message from Prizeout. Calls of that nature are preventing us from helping those who need physical gift cards and other important health-related phone calls from coming through, the post read.

People have until Dec. 31 to qualify for the incentive by getting a vaccine or booster, but Prizeout will continue reaching out to eligible residents after that date.

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Oneida County asks for patience amid slow progress with vaccine incentives - WKTV