'Administrative hurdles' could delay pediatric vaccine distribution: Doctor

Dr. Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, discusses pediatric vaccine distribution.

Video Transcript

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ADAM SHAPIRO: Welcome back to "Yahoo Finance Live." We've got a little over-- what, 48 minutes until the closing bell. Got to talk about what's going on with COVID-19 because of the news this morning that in just a couple of weeks, children younger than 12 could finally get their vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infection. Let's bring in Dr. Esther Oregon Health and Science University's professor of emergency medicine. Thank you for being here.

This, I imagine for a great many parents, is wonderful news. What do you want to say to those parents who might have just a little apprehension about vaccinating their children should these vaccines get the FDA authorization?

ESTHER CHOO: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Adam. Parents, understandably, are even more cautious about their children than themselves. And the nice thing is that we've now seen the FDA in action multiple times, and that process is standardized. It's rigorous. It's reliable. And it has allowed us to see and evaluate the data as their decision is released. And then it goes from the FDA to the CDC, which makes their final recommendation for public health purposes.

And so there will be ample time for us to review the data, see what the FDA's processes is and what the questions are and what the answers to those questions are. But you're absolutely right. It's not just getting the FDA approval for that UA. Right now, only about a third of parents say that they're ready to give their kids the vaccine if it were available today. So there will be a big process of education and discussion before people actually move forward, and we're able to get our kids vaccinated en masse to the level that makes a difference in their school attendance and other activities this winter.

- Doctor, I know there's certainly a lot of things up in the air right now. But just in terms of a timeline, would we be seeing this group of children be vaccinated within the next month, within the next two months? Do you have any idea what that looks like?

ESTHER CHOO: Well, it seems the FDA has scheduled this meeting at the end of October. And then it's a pretty quick process from-- assuming that all goes well, that they don't have additional questions that they'll push back with, and that their recommendation is to vaccinate all children and not a subset of these 5 to 11-year-olds, then it goes to the CDC. But that has been a very quick process between the FDA and the CDC.

Obviously, our administration is really wired for mobilizing things as fast as possible, but there could be a few hiccups there as well because this is a different dose than what we've been pushing out before. So when we approved the 12 to 17-year-olds in addition to adults, that was the same dosing. So there weren't a lot of administrative or technical hurdles.

For these younger kids, it's different. It's a third of the dose that will be going out. So that will require some different physical things. We may need different vials, for example. We'll certainly need different labels so that pediatric doses can be tracked for problems with batches or for side effects. It may even be-- we don't know yet-- it may even be that the syringes will be different. And it certainly will require different training because we're giving a different dose.

And so I think there'll be a few administrative hurdles that are hard to anticipate right now, and that may affect how quickly and efficiently we can distribute vaccine out to pediatricians and to pharmacists so that we can actually get the shots in kids' arms. So I think that general timeline of some sort of approval at the end of October. But November, probably by Thanksgiving, is when we'll actually start to see kids receiving the vaccinations.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Would an EAU for the vaccination for children clear the way for school systems, school boards to then require a vaccination in order to attend public schools? If you were advising a school board-- I mean, you've got to get vaccinated for measles before your child can go to school-- would this clear the way for that, and would it be appropriate to do that?

ESTHER CHOO: Well, if it rolls out the way that the adults did, I'm guessing that we'll do everything that we can to incentivize and encourage vaccination before we go to a mandate and that we may wait for full approval before the mandates hit, which was the pattern for the adult vaccinations. So I'm guessing it will be first the opportunity and then the mandate.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Doctor, I was reading earlier today, actually, about Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, CHOP, how they are near capacity. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with COVID. It has to do with a lot of people getting sick with other types of illnesses. So that leads me to the question of how important is it for people to get their flu shot and to do that early in the fall in order to help prevent some of these hospitals from being overrun?

ESTHER CHOO: Yeah, thank you. We're still in our surge here in Oregon. And we got to a point with our health system overload that our hospital was asking people to avoid activities that might get them injured. Basically, try to stay healthy and well, because anything that you get in terms of injury or illness contributes to our health system's ability to take care of everybody.

So certainly, as we head into winter-- of course, colder months are where people really congregate indoors-- because we're all back out in our workplaces and schools are open, flu will be a presence this year in a way that it really wasn't markedly last year. And so we're still coming off this-- or in the middle of this COVID surge. We have a lot of catch-up care from people who delayed care for their regular illnesses during COVID. And then on top of that, we'll collide with the flu season.

So so important to get flu vaccine this year. I know that is less exciting of a topic than COVID vaccines. But just like every year, flu vaccine is important to keep people from getting sick, and this year more than ever, because we're still simply reeling from the effects of COVID and from the catch-up care.