final approval of the pfizer vaccine. nearly 30 million children are now eligible. nbc s morgan chesky is at texas children s hospital where shot are being administered. i want to bring in the harvard medical school physician. morgan, on the ground in texas, kids getting shots at texas children s hospital. what are you hearing from them? what are you hearing from their parents? good morning. this is the day a lot of parents have been waiting for for a long time. this was part of the process of trying to get lives back to normal in a post pandemic world. there was a crowd of parents there this morning lining up to get some of the first shots in those 5 to 11-year-olds. they told us essentially this will allow them to live a more normal life going forward. there has been a lot of apprehension. a lot of concern with the fact that the delta variant wreaked
are preparing to go back in class and local and state officials in many places are butting heads over how to implement or not i wmplement a mask policy. this all happening as the death toll across the country continues to rise. hundreds of covid-19 survivors held marches in 20 states saturday to remember the more than 600,000 and counting americans killed by the virus and to call on lawmakers to take action. as they marched, the highly contagious delta variant wreaked havoc across the u.s. people are sick. deaths are up. and we are very discouraged. we had started to have some hope at the beginning of the summer. so to be back in this space, especially with winter just around the corner, is something that has us all worried. reporter: while vaccination rates in the u.s. are picking up, some people remain unconvinced to protect themselves against the virus. did you get the vaccine?
there s a fresh warning about the impact the delta variant covid-19 might have on the united states. it s not good. former fda chief scott gottlieb said the variant was detected in india is more transmissble. it could set off another spike in cases this fall, he said. right now in the united states, it s about 10% of infections. it s doubling every two weeks. it s probably going to become the dominant strap here in the united states. it doesn t mean we re going see a sharp uptick in infections but it means it s going take over. i think the risk is the fall this could spike a new epidemic heading into the fall. and earlier, i spoke with brown university s dean of the school of public health. i began by asking him how concerned he was about the delta variant. delta variant wreaked havoc in india, obviously, most people were not vaccinated.
of brown university school of health. thank you for being with us and all that you do. i want to start with the delta variant that is dominating infections in the uk with its rapid spread and news that the same delta variant is behind a spike in u.s. infections. how worried are you about this variant and those people refusing to get vaccinated or who have not been able to get the shot yet who will obviously all be vulnerable? yeah, first of all, thank you for having me back. i am concerned about this. the delta variant wreaked havoc in india, and obviously most people that were not vaccinated, it s causing a three to fourfold increase in infections in the uk, largely in the unvaccinated. six to 10% in the united states, and it will grow and the real risk is all the unvaccinated people who are very, very