Fauci backs COVID vaccine mandate for children attending school

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States' top infectious disease expert, supports a COVID-19 vaccine mandates for children attending schools, amid a surge in virus numbers from the highly contagious delta variant.

"I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea," Fauci said Sunday on CNN’s "State of the Union" show. "We've done this for decades and decades, requiring polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis" vaccinations.

U.S. children under 12 are not eligible to receive the vaccine, with pharmaceutical companies fast at work on one for the only segment of the population still ineligible.

Fauci anticipates they'll be enough data by early October for the Food and Drug Administration to consider whether the shot is safe for children under 12.

He said there was a "reasonable chance" Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines could get FDA clearance for that population segment before the holiday season, according to Reuters.

Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the White House chief medical adviser.