The vaccination of medical personnel, who are among the first to receive Covid-19 jabs, will begin with those working at hospitals dedicated to treating Covid-19.

After completing vaccinating staffs at Covid-19 treatment hospitals, health officials plan to inoculate medical personnel working at tertiary and general hospitals, who treat severe patients with a high risk of infection by Covid-19, according to the health authorities.

"For medical personnel, we are planning to inoculate those working at hospitals dedicated to treating coronavirus patients," the Central Disease Control Headquarters said. "The inoculations will most likely start with Pfizer's vaccine acquired through COVAX."

As the government identifies and registers the inoculation list, it will start inoculation soon after it confirms the vaccine introduction date.

The Central Disease Control Headquarters stressed that it plans to run a mock exercise on Tuesday, with the government providing jabs through central and regional vaccination centers. At the same time, some medical institutions will prepare for self-inoculation through such exercises.

"In that way, workers at Covid-19 hospitals will receive the vaccination first," the headquarters said. "Afterwards, we plan to move toward medical institutions that treat severely ill patients, such as tertiary and general hospitals."

According to a report by the Korean Doctors' Weekly, the sister paper of Korea Biomedical Review, however, a patient in his 20s, who arrived in Korea on Monday after receiving Pfizer's vaccine in the U.S. the day before, was hospitalized at a local general hospital after showing severe convulsions symptoms.

The hospital reported the case to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDA), which immediately initiated an emergency investigation.

With the health authorities planning to inoculate medical workers using Pfizer's vaccine, anxiety among the medical community will likely increase if the KCDA judges that the patient's convulsive symptoms are a side effect of the vaccine.