BY LUCY CRAFT

Tokyo — From the dire reports issued by Japan's pregnancy hotline operators, COVID-19 appears to have unleashed another frightening epidemic — of teenage pregnancy.

"'I'm desperate': Calls from teens to pregnancy hotlines surge while school's out," read a typical headline last May in the major newspaper Asahi Shimbun. A flood of frightening anecdotes seem to support claims that school schedule disruptions, leaving kids at home unsupervised for prolonged periods of time, has led to a rise in unprotected sex among students.

Jikei Hospital, in the southwestern city of Kumamoto, which operates an anonymous "baby hatch" to take in foundlings, said calls from junior and senior high school students hit a 10-year high in April. A counseling hotline in the western city of Kobe said inquiries tripled in April, mostly from teens, including one who said she turned to prostitution after losing her part-time job because of the coronavirus.

A nonprofit Tokyo-based organization that runs school sex education programs, Pilcon, said it was inundated with calls from teens worried after using home pregnancy tests or missing periods. Read more via CBS