A panel of vaccine experts will meet in early November to consider whether to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 12.

The Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices scheduled a two-day meeting for Nov. 2-3, health officials said Friday. The Pfizer topic is expected to take up part of the agenda.

The experts are anticipating the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will have decided by then whether to authorize use of the Pfizer vaccine for children between ages 5 to 11. An independent expert panel of advisers to the FDA will publicly discuss Pfizer’s data at an Oct. 26 meeting.

The CDC committee’s job is to help the agency develop recommendations for doctors and the public about which vaccines should be used and how they should given.

Currently, Pfizer vaccines are authorized only for people 12 and older. The company, along with its German partner BioNTech, formally requested emergency use authorization for 5- to 11-year-olds Thursday. 

If approved, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would be the first to be available to children under 12 in the U.S. and make more than 28 million additional Americans eligible to be protected from the virus.

Pfizer and BioNTech say their clinical trial has shown that a lower dosage of the vaccine in 5- to 11-year-olds — about a third of what is administered to adults — generates antibody levels just as strong as in teenagers and young adults after the second dose.

Side effects — such as fever, achiness or sore arms — were similar to those observed in people ages 16-25.

Many parents and pediatricians are clamoring for protection for children younger than 12. Not only can youngsters sometimes get seriously ill, but keeping them in school can be a challenge with the coronavirus still raging in poorly vaccinated communities.

While kids are at lower risk of severe illness or death than older people, COVID-19 does sometimes kill children and cases in youngsters have skyrocketed as the extra-contagious delta variant has swept through the country.