MTA warns of longer waits for subway amid bug wave
Another long pandemic year could end with long subway waits.
The MTA, which has been racked by the omicron COVID wave that is thrashing New York City, warned Monday that subway riders may spend extra time on train platforms, but said it did not expect major changes to service patterns.
Demetrius Crichlow, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s senior vice president for subways, said Monday the service would remain on a broadly normal schedule.
That promise came after an apparently contradictory tweet from the official New York City Transit subway account on Sunday that said trains would “run less frequently than usual” between Monday and Thursday.
“Subway service is running on a normal schedule with some exceptions,” Crichlow said in a statement. “The winter surge of the Omicron variant is affecting businesses across New York City, and that includes the MTA.”
It was not clear how many members of the MTA’s workforce had tested positive for coronavirus. The force struggled with lagging vaccination rates even before the arrival of the omicron strain, which can infect the vaccinated.
A spokeswoman for the MTA, Renee Price, said she was unsure of the source of the Twitter post, but suggested that it was inconsistent with the latest MTA planning. The post was still pinned atop the subway’s account on Monday afternoon.
Janno Lieber, the acting chairman and chief executive of the MTA, said in an interview on 1010 WINS that “people are not going to see dramatic changes — they may wait a minute or two longer on a platform.”
“We do have a lot more folks out because of COVID,” he told the radio station on Monday afternoon. “But we’re making these adjustments and service is running just like we’ve done since the beginning of COVID. We’re not going to let New York down.”
Staffing shortages have rippled across New York’s economy this December, putting stress on shortstaffed EMS crews, hospitals and nursing homes.
Gov. Hochul responded on Friday by shortening the minimum recommended isolation period for fully vaccinated essential workers to just five days.
A five-page state guidance for the measure limited shortened quarantines to “circumstances where there is a critical staffing shortage.” Rail transportation was defined as an essential service under the advisory.
On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had clipped the recommended isolation period for infected health care workers from 10 days to seven.
The omicron coronavirus strain that created Christmas nightmares across New York spreads with shocking agility. But it may cause less severe illness than older variants.
The state daily virus count climbed to almost 50,000 by Christmas, obliterating previous records, according to government data. The seven-day average positive-test rate reached double digits statewide and in the city, records show.