Gary & Leo's offering COVID-19 vaccination raffle

For the next five weeks Gary & Leo’s Fresh Foods is entering people who get their COVID-19 vaccines at their pharmacy into a drawing for a $100 gift card to the store in an effort to boost the community’s vaccination rate.

Gary & Leo’s Manager Tracy Job said entries will continue through the end of July with a winner chosen Aug. 2.

Job said people who have already gotten their vaccine at their pharmacy can get in contact to be entered as well.

He said a customer came in one day recently and suggested that they do something like this to address the low number of vaccinated people in the community, and he thought it was a good idea.

“We understood that there is a low percentage of adults vaccinated in Hill County, and we’re trying to encourage that number to climb,” he said.

He said the Hill County Health Department needs more people in the community to get vaccinated and Gary & Leo’s Pharmacy is a good place to do that, with no appointment needed and access to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which only requires one dose.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is only approved at this point for use in people 18 and older.

In their last COVID-19 update on June 18 Hill County Public Health Director and Health Officer Kim Berg said only 42 percent of the eligible population in the county is vaccinated, lagging behind the rest of the state at 45 percent.

This is coupled with a massive decrease in demand for the vaccine, the department having discontinued its weekly vaccination clinics months ago.

Berg said in a recent meeting of Hill County officials that incentives, like the one Gary & Leo’s is now doing, are being offered primarily by private businesses and she’s looking to speak with the state’s Department of Public Health and Human Services to see what her department is permitted to do in terms of incentives.

The customer who suggested the idea to Job was Havre resident Greg Kinholt, who said he thought Gary & Leo’s would be the best place to start offering vaccine incentives due to it being a well-respected local business, and one he tries to patronize whenever possible.

“I like the that they are a family-owned business and I try to purchase from them whenever I can,” Kinholt said.

He said he considers getting vaccinated against COVID-19 to be a duty people owe to each other as members of a community, and he is dismayed, but not overly-surprised by, the slowdown in vaccination.

“I felt like it was a civic duty,” he said, ”... not just to protect myself, but to protect my family members and anyone else I come into contact with in the community.”

Despite his strong feelings about the vaccine, Kinholt said, he was initially skeptical of it.

He said he rarely gets sick and never really bothered with vaccines, such as flu vaccinations, once he got out of grade school.

However, he said, after doing some of his own research and speaking to his doctor about the vaccine, it became clear that it was a highly effective way to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

As for the vaccine’s safety, he said he had a number of family members participate in the trails for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the same vaccine used by Gary & Leo’s, and neither them, nor anyone else involved, had any trouble result from it.

Kinholt encouraged fellow community members to talk to their own doctors and local pharmacists about the vaccine like he did.

He said even his local veterinarian pointed out to him that pets have been getting vaccines for decades without issue.