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

There were 96,003 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in the United States on Sunday, marking the first day the country has seen under 100,000 new cases since Nov. 2, according to data compiled by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak.

Meanwhile, the data shows the nationwide number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals continues to decrease. There are currently 81,439 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the U.S., the lowest number since Nov. 19.

An additional 1,474 deaths from COVID-19 were also reported nationwide on Sunday, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

However, the data is missing updates from a handful of states, some of which regularly do not report on the weekend and some of which are having technical difficulties.

According to The COVID Tracking Project, 41 states and Washington, D.C., have seen a decline in the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, while the rate in nine states is staying relatively the same.

Since the pandemic began, the U.S. has reported 26,996,534 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 463,339 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

ABC News’ Celia Darrough and Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.

The battles over in-person learning between teachers and the school districts in Chicago and San Francisco may temporarily be over.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced in a press conference Sunday that "at long last" a tentative agreement has been reached. Students will return to the classroom in stages, with pre-K students starting on Feb. 11, kindergarten through fifth grades on March 1 and sixth through eighth grades on March 8.

It is unclear when high school students will be slated to return to in-person learning. Public schools in Chicago had been fully remote since the pandemic began last spring.

In San Francisco, teachers unions have agreed to return to in-person learning when the city progresses to the red tier, California’s second-least most restrictive level. The city is currently in the purple tier, the state's most restrictive mode in the reopening plan.

ABC News’ Meredith Deliso, Joshua Hoyos and Matthew Fuhrman contributed to this report.

The number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are continuing to decline nationwide, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

There has been a four-week downward trend of reported COVID-19 cases – resulting in a 50% decline since the peak on Jan. 8.

However, the rates of adult occupancy in intensive care units remain high in several states, the report found.

So far, 39,037,964 vaccine doses have been administered, with 9% of the population (30.3 million people) having received one or more doses and 3% of the population (8.3 million people) having received two doses.

Since President Joe Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20, 22,512,683 doses have been administered toward his 100 million goal.

ABC News’ Josh Margolin and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.

Cases of the more contagious U.K. variant of the COVID-19 virus is spreading rapidly through the U.S., as much as doubling every 10 days, a new study suggests.

The study has not peer reviewed, so it has not been scrutinized for inaccuracies or context by specialists.

It is still not known whether the U.K. variant is more virulent or deadly, but it is more transmissible. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned last month that the U.K. variant could become predominant in the U.S. by March if spread the way it did in the U.K.

Vaccines don’t seem to be strongly impacted by the U.K. variant, but scientists are concerned about the efficacy of the vaccines against the South African variant.

-ABC News’ Eric Strauss