HOUGHTON — Michigan Technological University will continue encouraging employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine before they are required to be fully vaccinated at the start of the spring semester.

The university announced Friday it would require all employees to have been fully vaccinated by Jan. 10. Tech has been encouraging the vaccine since school started in August, and those efforts will continue, said Ian Repp, director of marketing and communications at Tech.

“This mandate applies just to employees, and we’ve given them until Jan. 10 to do so,” he said. “Anyway we can help make the process easier, we’re going to find ways to do that.”

The mandate comes after an executive order from President Joe Biden in September requiring federal contractors to provide safeguards against COVID-19. Later that month, the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force laid out what that would entail, including a requirement for employees to be vaccinated.

Over the past week, a number of universities have announced impending requirements due to the federal mandates, including all schools in Alabama’s university system, the three largest state universities in Kansas.

“Any university whose mission and purpose is to invest in research for the greater good, this impacts those universities,” Repp said. “There’s no group that’s providing guidance on it. Every university’s having to work through that.”

A person is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or their first dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The mandate provides exemptions for people with medical issues or religious objections.

Repp was unsure what percentage of employees have already been vaccinated.

Federal contractors are also required to set up a face covering policy dependent on COVID-19 levels in the community. Houghton County had 178 cases in the past week, or 498.8 per 100,000 — nearly five times the CDC’s minimum for a high risk level.

Michigan Tech had 59 confirmed cases between Oct. 8 and Friday. On Monday, the university moved back to Level 2 of its health and safety plan, which requires masks indoors unless a person is the only one in an enclosed space.

The university is working on a confidential system to provide vaccine status. Tech is also still working through the process of what will happen to employees who have not complied with the mandate by Jan. 10, Repp said.

“Obviously sustaining communication with individuals and finding ways they can provide information for proof of vaccination is what we’re focussing on right now,” he said.