The Regional Transportation District announced Thursday that it is dealing with its largest surge of COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic and that surge could impact Denver’s train and bus services.

The agency said in a news release that 77 employees tested positive for the virus over the past three weeks. RTD also said it is dealing with a worker shortage. 

“We are doing our best to maintain service within our existing resource constraints,” Debra Johnson, the agency’s CEO and general manager, said in the release.

“While RTD’s Operations team is working as creatively as possible in its approach to covering open shifts, our ‘people power’ is being severely affected by the prevalence of the omicron coronavirus variant. We know this situation creates (difficulty) for our customers, and we apologize for any inconvenience they experience due to these circumstances that are beyond our control.”

Pauline Haberman, a spokeswoman for the agency, said the impacts on routes had already begun.

“Every route/line has been impacted at some point,” she said in an email. “Today alone, over 100 trips just on bus routes.”

In an effort to reduce the impact, the agency is offering a $4,000 hiring bonus for many of its open positions and encourages anyone interested to apply online.

In the meantime, officials recommend riders sign up for the agency’s service alerts to stay up to date on service changes or delays.