Vax-a-Million Scholarship Winner is from Northeast Ohio for Second Consecutive Week

Sarah Afaneh of Sheffield Lake was announced as the third winner of the Ohio Vax-a-Million scholarship lottery. Like the two previous teenage winners, Afaneh has won an all-expenses-paid scholarship to an Ohio public university of her choice.

Though Sheffield Lake is in Lorain County, just west of Cuyahoga, she is the second Northeast Ohio student in a row to win the scholarship prize. Last week, Mayfield Village's Zoie Vinent took home the scholarship.

The third million-dollar winner is Mark Cline, from Richwood, Ohio. That's a village of roughly 2,000 in Union County, northwest of Columbus.

Last week's million-dollar winner was a 40-year-old Toledo man, Jonathan Carlyle, who got the Covid-19 vaccine specifically because of the Vax-a-million promotion.

Gov. Mike DeWine announced the Vax-a-million lottery last month to incentivize Covid-19 vaccinations, particularly before the state's health orders expired in early June. Though the lottery was sharply criticized from both the left and the right, the incentive was initially successful. The state announced a 43-percent increase in vaccinations of those 16 and older in the week after the lottery was unveiled, relative to the week before.

The state's vaccination rate has now dipped back to where it was before the lottery was announced. But two more weeks of drawings remain.

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