Figure. Child Abuse Hotline Calls and Text Messages by Week in 2019 and 2020.

Phone call and text inquiries are plotted as number of inquiries per week between January 1, 2019, and May 27, 2019, and January 1, 2020, and May 26, 2020. The vertical dashed line indicates the declaration of a health emergency by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, which occurred on January 31, 2020. The vertical dotted line indicates the initiation of school closures, which began on March 5, 2020. Calls initially increased, then decreased after January 31, 2020, and then increased again in May 2020 above 2019 levels. Text inquiries in 2020, while not directly comparable with 2019 data given their novelty as an added modality that year, more steadily increased after March 5, 2020, compared with phone calls.