COVID-19 updates: US has 1st day since November with fewer than 100K new cases

There were 134,339 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Monday's case count is far less than the country's all-time high of 300,282 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 2,031 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Monday, down from a peak of 4,466 new deaths on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend.

A total of 26,321,457 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 443,365 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.

So far, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use -- one developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and another developed by American biotechnology company Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. More than 32 million vaccine doses have been administered nationwide, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are 93,536 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, according to data compiled by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak.

The number represents a decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations nationwide over the last couple of weeks. The daily count reached as high as 130,000, data shows.

"Compared to last week, the number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 is down by 10% or more in 38 states," The COVID Tracking Project said on Twitter Monday.

-ABC News' Gabriel Ware

New Jersey's six mass COVID-19 vaccination sites will be closed Tuesday due to a winter storm that's grounded planes and halted subways across the Northeast region. New Jersey health care providers will reach out via text, email or phone to reschedule canceled appointments, according to the governor's office.

COVID-19 vaccination sites in New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Philadelphia and parts of Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia were also affected by the snowstorm on Monday.

-ABC News' Joshua Hoyos contributed to this report.

South Africa's coronavirus czar lamented unequal COVID-19 vaccine distribution between rich and poor nations, calling it "disheartening," in an interview Monday with ABC News. "The part of it that is most distressing is the way in which vaccines are being unevenly distributed," said Salim Abdool Karim, chairman of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19.

No single country can vaccinate its own population and think that it can stay safe while new virus variants emerge in parts of the world without vaccines, he explained. "That simply is a recipe for disaster."

Karim's comments follow similar criticism from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last week, who accused wealthy nations of "hoarding" excess vaccine doses that they did not immediately need.

ABC News' James Longman contributed to this report.