The U.S. government will begin shipping 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines directly to select pharmacies next week, Jeff Zients, White House coordinator on COVID-19, announced Tuesday.

The doses will go to 6,500 pharmacies on Feb. 11 -- and are on top of the 10.5 million doses already scheduled to be delivered next week, Zients said.

The participating pharmacies include:

-Walgreens (including Duane Reade)
-CVS Pharmacy, Inc. (including Long’s)
-Walmart, Inc. (including Sam’s Club)
-Rite Aid Corp.
-The Kroger Co. (including Kroger, Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, Ralphs, King Soopers, Smiths, City Market, Dillons, Mariano’s, Pick-n-Save, Copps, Metro Market)
-Publix Super Markets, Inc.
-Costco Wholesale Corp.
-Albertsons Companies, Inc. (including Osco, Jewel-Osco, Albertsons, Albertsons Market, Safeway, Tom Thumb, Star Market, Shaw’s, Haggen, Acme, Randalls, Carrs, Market Street, United, Vons, Pavilions, Amigos, Lucky’s, Pak n Save, Sav-On)
-Hy-Vee, Inc.
-Meijer Inc.
-H-E-B, LP
-Retail Business Services, LLC (including Food Lion, Giant Food, The Giant Company, Hannaford Bros Co, Stop & Shop)
-Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. (including Winn-Dixie, Harveys, Fresco Y Mas)

ABC News' Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.

Twenty-six million people in the United States -- which is 7.8% of the country's population -- have received one or more doses of COVID-19 vaccines, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions are continuing to decline nationally, while adult intensive care unit occupancy rates and deaths remain high in several states.

The country's seven-day average for new COVID-19 hospital admissions has dropped from a peak of 16,485 on Jan. 9 to 11,369 -- a 31% decline, the report said.

California, Texas, Georgia, Alabama and Oklahoma are the only states where ICU occupancies are above 85%, the report said.

ABC News’ Brian Hartman and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, said new, more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus are the top concern in the country right now and that the next six weeks will be critical.

"We're going to be doing … a full-court press on non-pharmacologic interventions [like masks] as well as getting as much vaccine out as we possibly can," Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at the International Aids Society conference on Tuesday.

"It's a very stressful situation ... when you have that much virus circulating, you're going to get a lot of mutations, no doubt about it," he added. "It's almost a race of trying to suppress the level of replication before we get so many accumulation of both the South African and other mutants as well as mutants of our own."

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

Maryland has identified two more confirmed cases of the new, more contagious B1351 variant of the novel coronavirus, which was first detected in South Africa, Gov. Larry Hogan said Tuesday.

The two patients are Montgomery County residents who recently traveled abroad, according to Hogan.

"Contact tracing is underway, and close contacts are isolating," the governor wrote on Twitter.

Maryland’s first case of the South Africa variant, in the Baltimore region, was announced on Saturday.

"The B.1.351 variant has not been shown to cause more severe illness or increased risk of death, though it is believed to be more transmissible," Hogan tweeted. "Initial evidence suggests that vaccines are still likely to be protective against the variant."

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