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4:13 PM, Feb 27, 2020

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Mail delivery slowed due to COVID-19, staffing shortages

Posted at 12:23 PM, May 22, 2020
and last updated 2020-05-22 12:34:17-04

Mail delivery times are noticeably slower these days, due in part to temporary staffing shortages and a surge in package volume because of COVID-19.

People's shopping habits have changed due to the stay-at-home order, meaning more and more items are shipping through the mail.

Package surges happen every year around the holidays, but president of American Postal Workers Union Local 480-481 Roscoe Woods pointed out, it's never been met with a pandemic before.

"In the early onset of this in mid-March we were averaging a couple hundred employees out of our largest facility due to the issues associated with coronavirus," Woods told Action News.

He said USPS allowed employees at a Troy call center to telework, but before they could implement that, around a dozen people got sick with the virus.

“This union lost its chief steward to COVID and then a couple days later we lost another member to COVID," he told Action News.