The first batch of COVID-19 vaccines by United States biotech company Moderna will arrive in South Korea on Monday.

The 55-thousand doses of the messenger-RNA based vaccine, enough to inoculate 27-thousand-500 people, will be stored at a plant of South Korean bio company GC Pharma before being distributed.

Last year, South Korea signed a deal to bring in the Moderna vaccine for 20 million people.

The Moderna vaccine is the third COVID-19 vaccine brought into South Korea after the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety plans to begin the distribution of the Moderna vaccine to vaccination centers and medical institutions around mid-June.

The government aims to get 13 million people their first shots by the end of next month and speed up the national inoculation process in the second half of the year with the increased vaccine supply.