Covid-19: Hong Kong tycoons offer a $1 million flat to boost jabs

Hong Kong - They will also offer 20 other prizes worth HK$100,000 each.

Worth HK$10.8 million ($1.4 million), the one-bedroom apartment will be the lucky draw's grand prize, the property developers announced Friday.

They will also offer 20 other prizes worth HK$100,000 each.

Hong Kong is one of the few places in the world to have secured more than enough doses to inoculate all 7.5 million people. But rampant distrust of the government combined with a lack of urgency in a comparatively virus-free city -- has led to hesitancy and a dismally lagging inoculation drive.

Seeking to boost uptake, Sino Group, Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation and Chinese Estates Holdings said all Hong Kong residents aged 18 and above who have received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccines will be eligible to register for the lucky draw until September 1.

Only permanent residents are eligible for the top prize of an apartment in the world's most unaffordable housing market.

Covid-19: Get vaccinated, win cash as California offers $116.5 million in prizes

"We hope to increase Hong Kong's vaccination rate through the lucky draw," Daryl Ng, the director of the foundation said in a statement.

The groups said further details would released at a later date.

The announcement came three days after the city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam rejected calls for the government to offer cash handouts to encourage inoculations. She suggested local businesses provide the incentives.

"To offer cash or something physical to encourage vaccination shouldn't be done by the government," she said.

Vaccine lotteries have started catching on in the United States, with California, Colorado, Ohio, New York and Oregon offering a chance to win costly prizes.

A rural town in the Philippines announced it will raffle off a cow to motivate people to get the jab.