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

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now projects that the country will have recorded up to 534,000 COVID-19 deaths by the end of February.

The CDC on Wednesday published its latest national ensemble forecast, which predicts that the country's COVID-19 death rate will likely decrease over the next four weeks, with 11,300 to 22,600 new fatalities from the disease likely reported nationwide in the week ending Feb. 27. A total of 479,000 to 514,000 COVID-19 deaths are projected to be reported nationwide by this date.

Last week’s national ensemble forecast predicted there would be a total of 479,000 to 514,000 COVID-19 deaths reported nationwide by Feb. 20.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser on COVID-19 to U.S. President Joe Biden, said people should "absolutely not" host or attend any Super Bowl parties this weekend.

"Watch the Super Bowl on TV, enjoy it, have a party in your house with your family with the people who are there," Fauci told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Wednesday on "Good Morning America."

"You don't want parties with people that you haven't had that much contact with, you just don't know if they're infected," he added. "So as difficult as that is, at least this time around, just lay low and cool it."

Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted that the country is still seeing a "considerable number of cases" each day and there's cause for concern over the new, more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus that were recently detected on U.S. soil.

When asked whether he thinks the Super Bowl could become a superspreader event, Fauci said he hopes not.

"I believe that they are trying to keep people separated enough in the stands wearing masks so they don't have that proximity," he added. "If you're outdoors and you're several feet apart -- 6, 7, 8, 10 feet -- you could be OK, as long as people abide by that and don't slip."

There were 114,437 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Tuesday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Tuesday'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 3,532 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Tuesday, 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 last month.

A total of 26,435,563 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 446,901 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.

Thousands of COVID-19 vaccine appointments were canceled after a snowstorm slammed the northeastern United States this week.

In Connecticut alone, some 10,000 appointments had to be rescheduled "as quickly as possible," as many vaccination clinics closed Monday, according to the state's health department. 

"Many clinics that were forced to close will be offering longer clinics hours and weekend hours to accommodate anyone who had their appointment cancelled yesterday or today," the Connecticut Department of Health said in a statement Tuesday. "We do not anticipate any issues with vaccine deliveries. Many will arrive today or tomorrow, which is in line with the vaccination plans of our providers."

In New Jersey, which saw some of the highest snowfalls, the state's six vaccine megasites were closed Monday and Tuesday. "We are still working to assess the storm's impact," Nancy Kearney, spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Health, told ABC News on Tuesday.

Depending on the vaccination site, appointments were being rescheduled throughout the week, with some sites extending hours.

Most vaccination sites in New York City remained closed on Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, with plans to reopen on Wednesday and "catch up on appointments quickly." Among those needing to be rescheduled were 1,000 appointments across Monday and Tuesday at the city health department's vaccine clinic in Elmhurst, Queens.

MaineHealth, one of two major health providers operating vaccine clinics in the state, canceled appointments on Tuesday. The other provider -- Northern Light Health -- planned to continue, the Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention said.

In Washington, D.C., which had just 2.6 inches of snowfall, there were very few requests for cancellations, according to the D.C. Department of Health.

The fallout from the snowstorm is less clear in Virginia and Pennsylvania, where the state health departments said they don't track counties' appointments or cancellations. 

ABC News' Laura Romero, Sasha Pezenik, Arielle Mitropoulos, Soo Rin Kim, Adia Robinson and Alisa Wiersema contributed to this report.