WATCH: Dr. Fauci smacks down Rand Paul for suggesting children don’t need protection from COVID-19

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday slapped down an attempt by Sen. Rand Paul to downplay the potential negative effects of the coronavirus on children.

During a Senate hearing on America's COVID-19 response, Paul pushed Fauci to say that it will be safe to send children back to school in the fall because they are far less likely to die from the disease compared to older people.

"Shouldn't we be at least be discussing what the mortality of children is?" Paul asked. "It's not going to be zero but it almost approaches zero. Between [the ages of] 18 and 45, the mortality was 10 out of 100,000."

Fauci, however, pointed out that this is still a new disease that can have dire effects on children, even if it doesn't result in their untimely deaths.

"We don't know everything about this virus, and we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children," Fauci retorted. "Because the more and more we learn, we're seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn't see from the studies in China or in Europe. For example, right now, children presenting with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome."

Watch the video below.