Good evening. I'm John Yang. There were 12 seasonal flu-related deaths of children this week,

according to the CDC. That brings the total number of pediatric flu deaths this season to 216.

That's the most in 15 years, and the flu season isn't even over yet.

Experts say one reason for this new record could be the plummeting flu vaccination

rate for American children. It went from 64% five years ago to 49% this season. And this week,

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans for new safety

testing requirements for vaccines.

That could delay the availability of new vaccines, including a COVID booster for this fall.

Virologist Dr. Peter Hotes is at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Hotes, there's a lot I want to talk to you about, but let's start with that new record for pediatric flu deaths this season. What do you make of that?

Well, I think it probably is related to the decline in immunization since most pediatric influenza deaths occur among the unvaccinated, like most of the other viral infections

that we've been seeing. But remember, the context of this, this is on top of

fourfold rise in measles outbreaks over the last year, even before what was going on

with this current major epidemic, a sixfold rise in pertussis cases. So the big picture is

going the wrong direction in terms of children not getting the vaccines that they should be getting.

Is this a holdover from the vaccination hesitancy that emerged during the COVID pandemic?

It very well might be. There's been some Gallup surveys and others that have shown that spillover effect, that the same parts of the country where adults were

refusing to get COVID vaccines are now spilling over to childhood immunizations.

So, for instance, in West Texas, which had some of the lowest COVID vaccination rates

in the country, guess what?

That's where we have our ginormous measles epidemic right now

in West Texas and the Panhandle. And it's going up into the conservative rural areas of the

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