Nearly 74% of eligible Americans have at least 1 COVID-19 vaccine dose

The country's daily death average continues to surge, now standing at more than 1,100 deaths reported a day. This marks the nation's highest average in nearly six months.

On Tuesday, the death toll crossed 650,000 Americans lost to the virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, meaning that 1 in every 504 Americans has died from the virus.

The U.S. COVID death toll is now more than 218 times higher than the number of lives lost during the U.S. attacks on Sept. 11. It is also rapidly approaching the total number of American deaths that were recorded during the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Prior to the Labor Day holiday, the U.S. daily case average stood around 150,000 cases a day. About a year ago, around Labor Day, the country was averaging about 38,000 new cases a day.

-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos

Tucson, Arizona, officials announced a pause on the city's policy to require its public employees to receive a COVID-19 vaccine after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich called it illegal and threatened to cut funding if the city went through with the plan.

Tuscon City Manager Michael Ortega said in a statement the city council is evaluating the mandate's legal position.

"Until we have a better understanding of our legal position in relation to today’s report, I have instructed staff to pause on the implementation of the policy," he said.

Brnovich said Tuscon's rule violated Gov. Doug Ducey's July executive order that banned any state or local office from requiring their staff get a vaccine against the coronavirus or any vaccine that has only received an emergency order.

"COVID-19 vaccinations should be a choice, not a government mandate," he said in a statement.

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said in a statement that the attorney general was "prioritizing his political ambitions over his responsibility to objectively interpret the law."

As of Tuesday, over 606,000 residents in Pima County, Arizona, the county that includes Tucson, have had one COVID-19 shot, according to the Pima County Health Department. That represents roughly 56.7% of the county's 1.07 million population, according to the U.S. Census numbers.

The county has recorded more than 4,000 new cases since Aug. 5, according to health department data.

-ABC News' Ali Dukakis

Idaho hospital officials are pleading for the public to get vaccinated and take COVID-19 warnings seriously after the state declared a crisis in its standards of care.

Kootenai Health, a northern Idaho hospital, currently has 113 patients with COVID-19, an increase from the 90 patients they had last week, officials said. Administrators had to set up 22 beds in a conference room to deal with the influx of patients.

Dr. Robert Scoggins the chief of staff at Kootenai Health, said the hospital was not built for a pandemic this size. Currently, 39 patients are in the intensive care units and 19 are on ventilators, all on high levels of oxygen, he said.

The hospital said it could see as many as 140 patients in the coming weeks.

"The message that I’d like to send out to people is that we’re near the limit that we can handle in this facility," Scoggins said in a news conference. "We’ve done a lot of things to expand our care to take care of more patients, but it keeps growing. If we had everyone in the community vaccinated, we would not be in this position.”

-ABC News' Flor Tolentino and Nicholas Kerr

In hard-hit Louisiana, the Ochsner Health System is seeing a significant decline in COVID-19 patients, now down to 530 -- dropping by nearly 250 patients in the last week, hospital CEO and president Warner Thomas said.

But in the wake of deadly Hurricane Ida, releasing patients from hospitals has been difficult, as some patients have no homes to return to, he said.

-ABC News' Jamie Aranoff