COVID-19 outbreaks at U.K. Royal Mail centers and resulting postage delays are causing some patients in the area of Basildon, Essex, to miss necessary imaging studies, according to a local news report.
Outbreaks among Royal Mail staff have led to shortages of staff as workers take time off for sickness and quarantines and 28 areas of the U.K. have been hit with postal delays, including Basildon, which is located east of London. One resident reported missing a mammogram because a letter notifying her of an appointment was delivered late, according to the Echo newspaper, a publication covering Basildon, Canvey Island, and Southend.
In a service update on January 15, the Royal Mail said that there are delays in some areas because of "exceptionally high volumes of mail" posted during the latest lockdown as well as safety measures at local mail centers and delivery offices to keep staff and customers safe.
![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
