Flu season is hitting the united states earlier and harder this year. case in point, hospitalizations are at their highest level in more than a decade with young children particularly at risk. that is the focus of the new piece out by on cnn.com by dr. edith sanchez at columbia university. good to see you. good to see you. great piece. when it comes to the flu, a lot of parents kind of look at it or want to look at it, i might say, like a really bad cold. but what do you want parents to understand or just people in general to understand about the flu this time and what they need to look out for and what they need to prepare for. unfortunately, that is one of the biggest misperceptions. we think it s just a bad cold. it can be so much worse and sometimes i wish people could come with me, just one day of my clinic to see what can happen or one day in our emergency rooms and to be very clear, the flu in
Working with all manufacturers to make sure there is a supply of infant formula. reporter: but parents say they need a better solution right now. it s not something that a parent should have to deal with. reporter: elizabeth cohen, cnn, reporting. it is an incredible struggle. here is dr. edith sanchez with her very cute 7-month-old who is excited to be with us too. so excited, it s good to see you. i love this, wonderful. i love that william is all gums. look, i mean, you can relate, right, as a mom to a 7-month-old, the kind of struggle that so many families are now dealing with. they may have been married to a particular type, you know, of formula, and now they re having to make a whole lot of adjustments. so what is your advice, what are you doing, what kind of advice are you giving to other moms and
Their eyes, they have light colored stools or dark colored urine, that s a sign that they may have hepatitis. you should be reaching out before your child develops those signs, you should be reaching out with early concerns. and again, this remains rare, but we re all educating ourselves. all right. thank you so much for imparting your advice to us and inviting and educating all of us about very tough topics. dr. sanchez, our thanks to little william there too, he did great. thank you. coming up, the siege of the steel plant in mariupol, ukraine, continues. ukrainian officials say they re open to turkish or chinese mediation to help arrange the evacuation of wounded soldiers. we re live in kyiv, next. and look at these live pictures out of the nation s capital right now. crowds have begun marching toward the u.s. . supreme court.
For very young children. the fda experts were supposed to meet tomorrow to discuss pfizer s proposal to vaccinate children ages 6 month through 5 years. but that meeting postponed for about two months. there was additional data that was submitted to the fda late last week, on thursday and friday, that changed the fda s perception of the absolute efficacy of the vaccine. let s get insights from dr. edith sanchez, a pediatrician. grateful for your time. i m putting up for our viewers to see what happened. they are waiting for three-dose data from the clinical study to be available in early april. obviously the omicron surge has contributed to the efficacy worries. about 18 million children 6 month through 4 years old whose parents were hoping for a vaccine. what happened here and what are your big questions at this moment? yeah, john, thanks for having me. first off, i am one of those parents. my own little guy is going to be 6 months in march.
And as a pediatrician, this is, of course, frustrating. but i think warranted. i think it s the best we know that happened here and everything we know, we know from press releases. none of us have seen the data. but what we know is that two doses may not have been enough to induce the immune response we re hoping to get in this age group. the efficacy is really what s at stake here and what we re hoping to gather more data on with this potential third dose. the safety, however, this is important to remember, the safety data is there and it s sound. it s safe. what we re waiting for is a potential third dose that will get the immune response that we want in this age group. so let me dwell on that point. people will say, the skeptics out there who spread misinformation all the time will say, ah-ha. ah-ha. there s no question about the safety of these vaccines. i ve had four shots. i m immunocompromised so i ve been boosted. the question here is, is it two doses or three doses? what s the right formula? these are young children
Benefits, so go ahead and mask up so we prevent transmission while allowing them to enjoy sports. a lot of people are reconsidering even outdoor events or gatherings because we know that omicron is just so contagious. dr. edith sanchez, thanks for your advice. appreciate it. coming up, a woman accused of punching a fellow passenger now facing a federal charge and possible prison time. the details on what happened next. the living room slash yoga shanti slash regional office slash. and this is the basement slash panic room. maybe what your family needs is a vacation home slash vacation home. find yours on the vrbo app.
January ahead. doctor, thank you so much for the conversation. and we know many of you have questions about how to protect yourself, your children, how to protect your entire family. joining me now to answer some of them is dr. edith sanchez, a primary care pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at columbia university, irving medical center. thank you for joining me. let s start with this question from andrea in maryland. she asks, when will booster shots be available for kids 12 to 15? for many of these kids, it s been six months since their second dose. great question. at this point, we don t know. i wish we had the answer, but we don t have a clear time line, and that is because we don t have data, we don t have the science on when immunity wanes for this age group. we know that 16 and up, kids 16 and up are now eligible for a booster shot, and that is because we did have the data for
Were not. when they followed them, they found 235 unvaccinated women became infected with covid-19 and 131 vaccinated women became infected with covid-19. that s a huge difference. that s really significant. what this shows is the vaccine does work in pregnant women. other studies have looked at that it is safe for pregnant women. it turned out there were neutralizing antibodies in the core blood after the baby was born and in the breast milk, so it can also confer protection to the baby. joining me, dr. edith sanchez, assistant professor of pediatrics at columbia university irving medical center. thank you so much for joining us this morning. thanks for having me, jim. help parents understand. you make a great point, the data right now does not show the delta variant is significantly