There were 181,490 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Wednesday, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It's the 23rd day in a row that the country has reported over 100,000 newly diagnosed infections. Wednesday's count is down from a peak of 196,004 new cases on Nov. 20.

An additional 2,297 fatalities from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide on Wednesday, the country's highest single-day death toll from the disease since May 6 and just under the all-time high of 2,609 new deaths on April 15.

A total of 12,778,254 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 262,283 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. 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 and crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4.

John Barsa, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, tested positive for the coronavirus Wednesday.

"The Acting Deputy Administrator has been isolating since he began exhibiting symptoms late Monday, Nov. 23, and will continue to until a retest is conclusive," spokesperson Pooja Jhunjhunwala said in a statement.

Barsa is acting deputy administrator and served as acting administrator for a term under the Vacancies Act, before President Donald Trump fired the deputy administrator to keep Barsa as the highest ranking official at the top U.S. aid agency.

ABC News' Connor Finnegan contributed to this report

The U.S. reached a new record high for hospitalizations for the 16th consecutive day, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

There are 89,954 Americans currently in the hospital with symptoms of the virus, according to the project.

The country recorded 182,537 new cases and 2,284 new deaths Wednesday, according to the data.

The death daily total is the highest since May 7, and the seventh-highest daily death total to date, The COVID Tracking Project tweeted.

The country saw a large jump in coronavirus-related fatalities over the last week, according to an internal memo from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services obtained by ABC News.

The 11,171 deaths recorded between Nov. 18 and Nov. 24 marked a 35.5% increase compared to the previous week, according to the memo.

Several states saw sharp jumps in their death tolls during the seven-day period, according to HHS. Alabama's seven-day death total increased by 27% going from 166 to 211, while Mississippi saw a 32% increase in deaths for the week ending Nov 22.

During that same seven-day period, the U.S. saw 1,198,099 new cases, which was a 9.4% jump from the previous week, the memo said.

The actual number of people infected with the novel coronavirus in the United States reached nearly 53 million at the end of September, according to a model developed by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The scientists estimated the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 in the U.S. population by taking the laboratory-confirmed case counts that were reported nationally and adjusting them for sources of under-detection based on testing practices in inpatient and outpatient settings. Preliminary estimates using the model found that 2.4 million hospitalizations, 44.8 million symptomatic illnesses and 52.9 million total infections may have occurred through Sept. 30.

"This indicates that approximately 84% of the U.S. population has not yet been infected and thus most of the country remains at risk, despite already high rates of hospitalization," the scientists wrote in a report published in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

There were 6.9 million laboratory-confirmed cases of of domestically-acquired infections that were detected and reported nationally through Sept. 30. Since then, the CDC's tally has increased to nearly 12.5 million. Based on the model's ratio, the true estimated total would now be more than 95 million.