T-R FILE PHOTO - Marshalltown Mayor Joel Greer is recommending that Marshalltown residents get vaccinated and wear masks when social distancing isn’t possible.

With COVID-19 cases rising in the United States, communities are making recommendations to keep numbers low. At the forefront of these recommendations by some community members, is getting vaccinated.

“The best advice I should have started with is if you have not been vaccinated, by God go get vaccinated,” Marshalltown Mayor Joel Greer said.

Greer is also recommending citizens follow CDC recommendations.

“Science is recognizing things are changing as COVID is morphing into variants. Right now, it appears that a lot of people are starting to wear masks, even though they’ve been fully vaccinated,” Greer said.

He said he got new masks Wednesday which he and his family are wearing.

Kristie Fisher, the chancellor of Iowa Valley Community College District, is also recommending students receiving vaccinations.

“It’s not required in any way, but we’re trying to share information with them about the benefits of vaccination,” Fisher said.

Like Greer, she is recommending masks be worn in indoor areas where social distancing may not be possible.

“Again, it will be the choice of the student or the employee, but we are following the CDC guidance,” she said.

With the start of the school year soon approaching, contingency plans are being discussed if the virus spread grows once again.

“We’re always concerned for student safety, always making plans for COVID-19. We’re doing it during COVID-19. We’re really spending a lot of time planning, not just how we’ll start the academic year, but then having a contingency plan,” Fisher said.

Some students and staff have expressed concerns about the virus with the start of the school year coming up.

“We definitely have individuals who are more concerned about it than others and in a lot of those cases, some of the folks I’ve heard from who are the most concerned have young children at home who weren’t vaccinated, or either themselves or someone in their family has health concerns,” she said. “There have been people who have been really vigilant all the way through this process, so we also are trying to make sure that we’re doing things that honors each person’s own kind of personal level of concern.”

With having dealt with the virus a year prior, Fisher said they have learned a thing or two about mitigation strategies. She said the mitigations more so coincided with the number of people expected in certain spaces, rather than what the spaces themselves are.

“It had more to do with the number of people at an event or the number of people in a space,” she said. “We’re really just taking everything we’ve learned, applying it the best way possible, and trying to be flexible.”

Greer wishes more could be done at the national level in terms of mandates.

“I wish that the federal government would ramp up the mandates. I wish the governors in all 50 states would either follow the science and make statewide proclamations or mandates that keep us safer, or at least allow local governments like cities to make those determinations,” he said.

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Contact Sam Stuve at 641-753-6611 or at sstuve@timesrepublican.com