WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — A business services company in Waterloo has laid off dozens of workers after the coronavirus pandemic upended its recent expansion. VGM Group announced this week that it has eliminated 58 full-time jobs and 15 part-time jobs. The employee-owned company said that it had offered transfers, extended furloughs or early retirement packages to another 17 workers. VGM Group provides purchasing, insurance, health care management, marketing and other services to thousands of business customers across North America.

VGM CEO Mike Mallaro says the cuts are “very difficult for everyone in the VGM family” but necessary.

(Radio Iowa) — It will likely take a year or more to replace two medical marijuana dispensaries in eastern and western Iowa. Dispensaries in Council Bluffs and Davenport closed without notice on March 30th. The manager of the Iowa Department of Public Health’s medical cannabis program, Owen Parker, says the licenses of the closed dispensaries operated by the Have a Heart company are no longer valid.  “There’s no management agreement where transfers or anything like that that can be done. The licenses, once they’re closed, are rescinded. It just starts from scratch however many licenses need to be filled,” Parker says.

Parker says Have A Heart ignored the rules of their contract and failed to give six months’ notice. He says if the company had given proper notice — the re-opening process could have been faster. Parker says the license application process will be underway soon.  “And then we will award the license to somebody which then is when they would move forward with their buildout, so from beginning to end you can’t really put an exact timetable on it, it’s easy to say a year or more in all reality, ” according to Parker.

Patients in eastern Iowa will have to get their medical marijuana products from the remaining dispensaries in Sioux City, Waterloo, or Des Moines.

(Radio Iowa) — With the coronavirus moving academic life online, some researchers are shifting their work to benefit health care workers. Madeline Jensen is a University of Iowa graduate student studying sustainable water development. Her research typically focuses on chemical compounds known as PFAS (PEE-faas), but Jensen says those studies aren’t considered critical right now. “That research I pretty much had to stop when the university shut down and I could only work on reading papers about it and writing what I could on it,” Jensen says.

However, since a U-I official approached her lab, Jensen has been working to create air filters for personal protective equipment like masks. This could better safeguard health care workers from breathing in tiny particles that may carry the virus. U-I Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering David Cwiertny says his students usually make filtration devices to take pollutants out of drinking water. They’re adapting to fit with the current crisis, Cwiertny says, as anyone who does research looks for ways their work can help society. Cwiertny says, “What we’re trying to do here is, if there’s an opportunity for us to contribute our expertise and help, rather than just sitting on the sidelines, when we would take that opportunity to see what we can do.”

Cwiertny says normally he’d have about a dozen people in the lab, but now there’s just two to take proper precautions against COVID-19.

(Reporting by Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)