As the coronavirus numbers continue to tick upward in Iowa, lawmakers are encouraging people to get vaccinated. 

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley encourages those who haven’t been vaccinated yet to do so. 

“Number one, we know vaccination works. So, if you haven’t been vaccinated, get vaccinated. I’ve been vaccinated, my wife has been vaccinated, I think most of my staff has been vaccinated and of the 164 million people that are vaccinated, less than one tenth of one percent have been infected with the virus and .001 percent have died, according to the data from the CDC.”

Grassley tells Raccoon Valley Radio getting vaccinated is a personal choice people need to make and he is against the federal government mandating vaccinations for everyone. Grassley says there isn’t a high potential for another lockdown. 

“I don’t think there will be a shutdown because we learned from the lockdown we had starting March of 2020, we made a lot of mistakes, we aren’t going to make those mistakes again and the extent to which there is any decisions along that line, it’s going to be made by state government.”

Grassley doesn’t believe the federal government should be the one making the decision on whether or not states should move into a shutdown.