COVID testing mandate ends for unvaxxed transit workers

Thousands of MTA employees who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer have to be tested weekly for the virus, transit officials said Wednesday.

The agency began requiring the tests on Oct. 4 for workers at the state agency who refused to get their shots. The mandate came as former Mayor Bill de Blasio required all city employees to get COVID-19 vaccines in order to keep their jobs.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board in December approved a 2022 budget that included $100 million to test employees who failed to submit proof they’d been vaccinated, which accounted for about 30% of the agency’s workforce of about 67,000 people.

MTA spokesman Tim Minton on Wednesday said the testing program cost much less than that — about $14.7 million — and that the costs are expected to be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“As we move into this last phase of the pandemic, hopefully, the MTA has suspended its vax or test program for its employees,” MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said during an agency board meeting. “The MTA program was one of the most successful and effective of its kind in the country.”

The MTA set up more than 700 testing sites for workers, including dozens of boxes fixed to subway token booths where unvaccinated employees could drop off tubes of their spit to be tested for the virus. Lieber said the testing program identified about 25,000 positive cases of the virus.

MTA bosses never fully enforced the testing requirement. They instead surveyed “statistically significant samples” of employees’ test results.

The number of vaccinated transit workers has ticked up since the testing mandate went into effect, from about 70% of the agency’s workforce to just over 76%, officials said. Vaccination rates remain low on the MTA’s commuter railroads, as just 70% of Long Island Rail Road employees and 73% of Metro-North employees have submitted proof they’ve received at least one dose.

The MTA’s workforce was hit hard in 2020 as New York became an early epicenter of the pandemic. At least 170 of the agency’s employees have died from the virus, including an estimated 123 during a horrifying two-month stretch in the spring of 2020.