CHARLESTON — Making good on a promise, Gov. Jim Justice announced Thursday that West Virginia teenagers and young adults can now apply for a gift card or a savings bond if they get their COVID-19 vaccination.

During his COVID-19 briefing Thursday, Justice said eligible young people can now go to governor.wv.gov and apply for the State of West Virginia Vaccine Incentive Program.

The program is open to West Virginia residents between the ages of 16 and 35 born after Dec. 1, 1985. Applicants must receive either both doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines or the one-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

Applicants can either choose between a $100 pre-paid debit card or an electronic U.S. savings bond. The program is retroactive, so any eligible young person who already received their vaccinations can still participate.

“We really appreciate you all getting vaccinated,” Justice said. “Not only are you picking up a few extra bucks, but you may very have saved your life or saved the lives of others. We’re going to continue to do this program and absolutely we want all the 16-to-35-year-olds to get vaccinated. We need you to get vaccinated right now.”

Justice first announced the idea of an incentive program at the end of April, though it took several weeks to work out the details with the U.S. Treasury Department to find out if the state was allowed to use federal COVID-19 recovery dollars for the program. Justice estimated that the incentive program could cost as much as $20 million.

“It’s dollars that will go out the door and stimulate our economy,” Justice said. “People getting the gift card will absolutely spend those dollars and it will help our economy and our small businesses.”

Dr. Clay Marsh, the state coronavirus czar, said the biggest age group spreading the variants of COVID-19 are those between the ages of 20 and 29, while the 10-19 age group are more likely to spread the virus in general.

“That 10 to 29-year-old age group is really the group that we are most focused on to try to reduce the transmission,” Marsh said. “The virus can only replicate when it is infecting someone … the more unvaccinated people we have, the more they act as reservoirs for the virus to continue to mutate and to introduce new variants.”

“I am again calling upon all West Virginians to help us … get those people across the finish line and get the numbers of them vaccinated very high because we need that,” Justice said. “We’ve found that they are real transmitters of this disease and we’ve got to have their help and get them vaccinated.”