U.S. passenger railroad Amtrak says it will temporarily suspend a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees and now no longer expects to be forced to cut some service in January.

In a memo to workers on Tuesday, Amtrak said it would allow employees who were not vaccinated to get tested on a weekly basis instead, citing litigation over President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate.

Currently, fewer than 500 active Amtrak employees are not in compliance, and 97.3 percent of the service’s workers have gotten at least one shot, Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn said in the memo.

Last, week the railroad told Congress it anticipated ‘proactively needing to temporarily reduce some train frequencies across our network’ because of the vaccine mandate.

U.S. passenger railroad Amtrak says it will temporarily suspend a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees and now no longer expects to be forced to cut some service

During his decades as a Senator, Biden (seen in 2008) was famous for riding Amtrak daily to commute to DC from his home in Delaware

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Amtrak, which is public subsidized but operates as a quasi-private for-profit entity, had previously cited President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate in ordering employees to get the shots.

Now the rail service says a court order halting the implementation of the mandate for private employers has caused it to ‘reevaluate’ its policy and ‘address the uncertainty about the federal requirements that apply to Amtrak.’

‘As a result, Amtrak will offer testing for those employees who have already received an accommodation to our vaccine policy and for those currently unvaccinated employees,’ Flynn wrote in the memo.

Amtrak said that while Biden’s order is being litigated, unvaccinated employees will be able to remain on the job as long as they submit a negative COVID test at least weekly.

A pair of courts last week week blocked a mandate for healthcare workers and one for contractors.

Biden’s mandates for federal workers and for the military remain in effect amid the ongoing battles and appeals.

During his decades as a Senator, Biden was famous for riding Amtrak daily to commute to DC from his home in Delaware.

Amtrak cut service and reduced its workforce after travel plummeted because of the pandemic – at its low point last year, ridership fell to 4 percent of its pre-pandemic level.

Amtrak President Stephen Gardner said Amtrak has restored most service and about 70 percent of passenger traffic has returned, ‘but it’s going to take several years’ for ridership to return to 2019 numbers.

The exact timing, he said, will depend on how long the pandemic lasts and how quickly business travelers get back on the train.

Amtrak has said it expects to hire 2,500 to 3,500 employees by September 2022, but its own inspector general said this week that the company doesn´t have enough staff or leadership in human resources to recruit, screen and hire those workers.

Nearly half of the 64 jobs in talent-acquisition are vacant, leading to hiring delays, the auditor said.

On Monday, a divided U.S. appeals court rebuffed a request by six employees to block United Airlines from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for workers that imposes unpaid leave on those who are granted religious or medical exceptions.

A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to reject the emergency request for an injunction blocking the mandate while the employees appeal a November ruling by a federal judge in favor of the airline.

The case is one of many legal battles over vaccine requirements imposed by companies and governments.

United Airlines was the first major air carrier to issue a vaccine requirement and others followed. United has granted around 2,000 religious and medical exemptions to employees in roles including pilots, flight attendants and customer service agents.

A United spokesperson declined to comment on the 5th Circuit decision.

The dissenting member of the three-judge panel, Judge James Ho, sharply criticized the decision, writing that “vaccine mandates like the one United is attempting to impose here present a crisis of conscience for many people of faith.”

“To hypothesize that the earthly reward of monetary damages could compensate for these profound challenges of faith is to misunderstand the entire nature of religious conviction at its most foundational level. And that is so whether the mandate comes from D.C. or the C-Suite,” added Ho, who was appointed to the bench by Republican former President Donald Trump.