South Korea has donated 500,000 protective masks to the Department of Veterans Affairs to use in response to the COVID-19 pandemic — a boost to the D.C. VA Medical Center, which has one of the highest numbers of infections in the system.

A military transport aircraft landed at Joint Base Andrews on Monday with the masks in honor of Korean War veterans and the alliance between the U.S. and South Korea that began in 1953.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War, and the equipment came as VA hospitals across the country have faced major protective equipment shortages. The D.C. VA Medical Center had the 7th highest number of coronavirus cases out of 140 facilities according to data from the department.

In March, VA inspector general staff visited 230 medical centers and found that more than half of the facilities reported supply shortages for equipment like respirators, masks and personnel such as intensive care nurses.

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie downplayed the shortages until the physician in charge of the VA health care system, Dr. Richard Stone, acknowledged the problem in an interview with The Washington Post.

“I had 5 million masks incoming that disappeared,” Stone said.

The gift of protective masks from South Korea was welcome amid the shortages, and a “sign of the deep and ongoing respect our two nations have for each other that we cemented nearly 70 years ago in a time of war and great crisis,” said Wilkie in a statement.

Officials from the Republic of Korea Embassy greeted the arriving C-130 as it landed on base. VA officials began the process of transporting the face masks for use in VA medical facilities across the nation.

Last month, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced the purchase of 500,000 coronavirus tests, also from South Korea, in an effort to get more Marylanders tested for the virus. The tests arrived via Korean Air, and not through a military transport, but remain heavily protected by the Maryland National Guard amid fears of the federal government seizing the medical equipment.

“We took an exponential, game-changing step forward on our large-scale testing initiative,” Hogan said at the time of the announcement. Maryland paid about $9 million for 5,000 test kits, which can be used to make half a million tests.

Hogan has come under criticism for detailing how those tests have been distributed.

Meanwhile, Hogan has criticized President Donald Trump for the lack of tests distributed to states from the national stockpile despite the president’s repeated claims to the contrary.

“The administration, I think, is trying to ramp up testing,” Hogan said in an interview on CNN. “But to try and push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing—somehow we aren’t doing our job—is just absolutely false.”