Coronavirus updates: US will soon have 'half a million' deaths, CDC says

There were a record 4,327 new deaths from COVID-19 registered in the United States on Tuesday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Tuesday's tally overtakes the country's previous all-time high of 4,194 fatalities from the disease, which were registered on Jan. 7, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 215,805 new cases of COVID-19 were also confirmed nationwide on Tuesday, down from a peak of 302,506 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2. It's the eighth consecutive day that the country has reported more than 200,000 new cases, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the holidays followed by a potentially very large backlog.

A total of 22,846,808 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 380,796 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of pandemic hit. By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country's cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up over the summer.

The numbers lingered around 40,000 to 50,000 from mid-August through early October before surging again to record levels, crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4, then reaching 200,000 on Nov. 27 before topping 300,000 on Jan. 2.

Texas has become the second U.S. state to have a total of more than 2 million diagnosed cases of COVID-19.

The Lone Star state surpassed the grim milestone late Tuesday, with a cumulative tally of 2,014,645 confirmed cases. California currently has 2,795,978, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

More people in the United States died of COVID-19 in the past week than they did from the flu during all of last season, data show.

There were an estimated 22,000 flu deaths nationwide during the 2019-2020 flu season, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The flu season was regarded as moderate and stretched out over several months.

By contrast, there were 23,119 new COVID-19 deaths reported between Jan. 6-12, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

-ABC News' Anne Flaherty

There were 4,056 deaths due to COVID-19 reported on Tuesday in the U.S., according to The COVID Tracking Project.

That marks the second time new deaths surpassed 4,000, based on the tracker's tally, following the record 4,081 reported less than a week ago on Jan. 7.

The seven-day average number of deaths reported Tuesday also set a new record, the tracker said.

There were 213,885 new cases and 131,326 people are currently hospitalized due to the virus in the U.S.