Coronavirus updates: US reports nearly 300,000 new cases in all-time high

In the wake of the Trump administration falling short on its vaccination goal, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told "Good Morning America" Thursday, “We always knew that this was going to take a while to ramp up."

"The curve is rapidly increasing, in terms of number of people being vaccinated," Adams said. "So we shouldn't extrapolate from what happened yesterday to what's going to happen six months from now. What we should do is make sure that curve continues to go up and continue to support our state and public health departments, which is what we are doing."

The Trump administration had promised that 20 million people would be vaccinated by the end of the year.

As of Wednesday morning, 2,794,588 Americans had received vaccine doses and 12.4 million doses had been distributed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"There's vaccines manufactured. There's vaccines allocated. There’s vaccines delivered. And then there's vaccines put in arms,” Adams said. “From a federal perspective, we are on track to have 20 million people able to be vaccinated, doses on the ground, by the end of next week.”

Adams also urged Americans to celebrate New Year's Eve virtually.

“This has been a marathon, but we don't want to trip at the finish line,” Adams said. “We want to have a normal New Year’s next year, we want as many of our loved ones and family and friends as possible to be able to enjoy that New Year’s in 2021. The way we do that is by pulling together and sacrificing one more time so that we can ramp up these vaccinations and put this virus away for good.”

ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.

The U.S. reported 3,903 deaths on Wednesday, a new record for daily fatalities, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations also reached a record high with 125,220 and there were 225,671 new cases, according to the tracking project.

"Holiday reporting delays are still markedly affecting testing, case, and deaths figures," the group tweeted.

The COVID Tacking Project said the death count included a backlog of 200 fatalities from Washington state.

"Even without this backlog, today's total would still be the highest to date," the tracking project tweeted.

It warned that more data disruptions are expected with the New Year's Day weekend.

Texas health officials announced a record 326 deaths on Wednesday.

The previous record was set on July 23 with 278 deaths, according to health data.

The state had 17,458 new daily cases and 11,992 hospitalizations, according to the health department. There are currently 602 intensive care unit beds remaining in Texas, health officials said.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order Wednesday to speed up access to the COVID-19 vaccine in the state.

The Arizona Department of Health Services will take the lead in the vaccination rollout under the order. The department is tasked with establishing and delivering a statewide implementation model.

Currently, Arizona counties are responsible for their own implementation plans.

"This is a health emergency, and we need all levels of government and our health system operating as such. Vaccines don't do any good sitting in a freezer," Ducey said in a statement.

The state health department will have the authority to establish private distribution sites, according to the executive order.

There is no statewide data for vaccinations. The executive order mandates that all counties display their vaccination numbers on their websites and share the info with the state health department.

Maricopa County, which leads the state with over 314,000 cases, has administered at least 36,000 doses as of Wednesday, according to the county's health department.