By Tim Mastro

WILMINGTON — State officials say Delaware is on pace to reach its goal of 70% of Delawareans to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by July 4, and believe the state’s new vaccination incentive program can help it over the line.

Currently 66.4% of Delawareans 18 years old and older have received at least one dose of vaccine. Gov. John Carney said the state needs about 17,000 more people to be vaccinated to reach the July 4 goal, which breaks down to less than 1,000 a day and less than 5,000 a week.

DE Wins! — the state’s incentive program, which kicked off this week, aims to increase the demand for the vaccine.

“At the height of the demand we would do 15,000 in a weekend at Dover Downs,” Gov. Carney said during his weekly COVID-19 briefing Tuesday. “We only need just short of 17,000 to meet our goal. That gives you some idea about the decline of the demand.”

The first prizes for DE Wins! were drawn on Monday and included $5,000, two annual passes to Delaware State Parks and Wilmington Blue Rocks suite tickets for those either 12 to 17 years old or those who have been vaccinated since May 24. Winners were contacted by the Delaware Division of Public Health on Tuesday.

Drawings will be done on Mondays and Fridays by the Delaware Lottery until June 30. A grand prize of $302,000 and two low-number Delaware license plates, for all fully vaccinated Delawareans regardless of when they received their vaccine, will be drawn on June 30.

Friday’s drawing will give out one prize package to Funland and two Delaware State Parks passes to those between the ages of 12 and 17 years old. For those 18 years or older, Friday’s prizes are $5,000 and tickets to September’s Firefly Music Festival in Dover.

Businesses are giving out their own prizes as well, helped by $5,000 grants from the Delaware Division of Small Business.

Milton Theater, for example, is providing two free tickets to an upcoming show with proof of vaccination. Kee’s Cookies and Cupcakes of Clayton is giving out a free cookie and cupcake bundle to vaccinated individuals while Ms. Robino’s restaurant in Wilmington is offering a free order of spaghetti and meatballs to its vaccinated dine-in customers.

All offers for vaccinated individuals are available here.

“It’s a win-win.” Gov. Carney said. “It’s an opportunity to encourage people to go out to the small businesses that were affected so negatively during COVID-19 and gives you an incentive to be vaccinated. It rewards you for being vaccinated. And everybody wins when everyone is vaccinated.”

A list of vaccination clinics is posted here.

A.J. Schall, director of the Delaware Emergency Management Agency, said the state’s focus continues to be on smaller, community-focused vaccination sites.

“To get the 17,000 people we need, we know we have to go to communities,” Mr. Schall said. “We need to partner with community groups, churches, restaurants, where we can get that foot traffic and help educate people to get them interested in getting vaccinated.”

There have been 916,758 doses of the COVID-19 vaccines administered in Delaware, as of Monday at 11:59 p.m. A total of 427,838 have been vaccinated in the state, which includes 386,423 Delawareans.

An additional 101,270 persons, 91,062 of which are Delawareans, are partially vaccinated and are awaiting their second dose of a two-dose vaccine series.

Delaware’s positive case statistics have continued to decline as more people are vaccinated and the weather becomes warmer. The DPH reported just 30 new cases statewide in Tuesday’s update.

The seven-day rolling average for new positive cases is down to 60.3 cases per day — the lowest since mid-August of last year. The number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations remained at a yearly low of 48 and there were no new COVID-19-related deaths to report as that total stayed at 1,661.