On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci painted a grim future for the United States if Americans don't adhere to public health measures during the holidays. "Without substantial mitigation, the middle of January can be a really dark time for us," Fauci said during a news conference held by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Americans need to keep social distancing until 75% to 80% of the population can get the COVID-19 vaccine, which would provide an umbrella of community-level protection, Fauci explained. "By the time you get to the beginning of April, you’ll start getting people who have no high priority, just the normal man and woman, New Yorker in the street who's well, has no underlying conditions [getting the vaccine]," he added.

As of Monday, New York State's testing positivity rate was 4.7%, according to Cuomo. The governor estimated that more than 70% of infections spreading in the state were connected to small gatherings.

-ABC News' Rachel Katz contributed to this report.

For the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the United States is reporting an average of nearly 2,200 deaths from the disease per day, according to an ABC News analysis of data collected and published by The COVID Tracking Project.

The national seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths per day day is currently 2,171. That figure has increased by 139% in the past month.

Last week, there were nearly 15,000 fatalities from the disease recorded nationwide, including five days where the daily death toll surpassed the 2,000 mark. That's roughly equivalent to 88 COVID-19 deaths reported each hour.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has reported over 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 every day for more than a month straight, including three consecutive days where the daily count topped 200,000.

Just in the last month, the national seven-day average of daily new cases has doubled, now averaging 191,736 -- the highest it has been since the beginning of the pandemic.

There were 1,018,657 cases recorded nationwide in the first five days of December. To put that in perspective, it took nearly 100 days from the first recorded COVID-19 case in the U.S. for the country to surpass 1 million confirmed cases.

Hospitalizations continue to surge to unprecedented levels, with over 101,000 patients currently hopitalized with COVID-19 across the country -- a new national record.

In the past two months, current hospitalizations have more than tripled, increasing by 223%.

ABC News' Benjamin Bell, Brian Hartman, Kim Soorin and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.

South African Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has called on final-year students who attended end-of-year parties to immediately self-quarantine for 10 days to prevent spreading the novel coronavirus.

Mkhize made the plea to students and parents on Sunday, after numerous people who recently attended "Rage" parties in Ballito and Jeffrey's Bay tested positive for COVID-19. The events are hosted every year in South Africa as thousands of students celebrate the end of matriculation.

"We confirm that we have now identified a number of COVID-19 confirmed cases arising from these super-spreader events," Mkhize said in a statement. "This therefore means that if you attended any of these Rage events, you are now regarded as a contact."

In addition to quarantining, Mkhize also urged attendees to get tested as soon as possible.

South Africa has the highest tally of COVID-19 infections in all of Africa, with more than 814,000 confirmed cases including over 22,000 deaths.

Doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have been delivered across the United Kingdom, ahead of the launch of the country's immunization program.

The potentially life-saving vaccine will be administered nationwide starting Tuesday morning, and some 800,000 doses were expected to be in place for the first day of what will be the largest-scale immunization program in U.K. history.

Vaccinations will be rolled out in phases, with elderly care home residents and their carers first on the priority list, followed by anyone else aged 80 and over, as well as frontline health and social care workers.

Last week, the U.K. became the first country in the world to authorize the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use. The vaccine was shown in late-stage clinical trials to be more than 95% effective in preventing COVID-19.

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams urged people to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously and follow public health guidelines as infections and hospitalizations soar across the country.

"I want the American people to know this virus is incredibly unforgiving, cases are going up, hospitalizations are going up, my colleagues are dog-tired and we need you to hang on just a little bit longer because we've got vaccines coming but we want as many people to be alive to get them as possible and a lot of that is going to depend on your behavior," Adams told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Monday on "Good Morning America."

Although "more people than ever are wearing masks," Adams said he's "very" concerned by the number of people who still "don't understand how much spread is occurring by people who don't have symptoms."

About 20 million "full doses" of COVID-19 vaccines will be available by the end of the year, according to Adams, who urged every American to be immunized against the virus as soon as a vaccine is authorized and made available.

"It's a way that we can ultimately end this pandemic, but it doesn't matter if people won't get the vaccination," the surgeon general said. "We know that vaccine levels are only about 50% for adults for flu and they go down to about 40% for African-Americans."

Adams said he is working with historically black colleges and universities as well as faith communities to bolster vaccine confidence among all populations. The White House is also hosting a vaccine summit Tuesday, he said.

"One thing you can all do right now, it's national flu immunization week, get your flu shot because half a million people were hospitalized last year with the flu," Adams said. "We simply can't afford for that to happen this year with hospitals being overwhelmed."

The surgeon general said the current surge in infections across the country "is different than earlier surges," because it's not about a lack of masks or personal protective equipment, nor is it due to a lack of testing.

"It's really about health care capacity, and certain places are just being overwhelmed," he said. "So we know that we can actually help them with their health care capacity by immunizing their health care staff. We're going to leave it up to the states, but we're going to give them guidance."

Adams noted it's also important to vaccinate those who are most likely to die from COVID-19.

"We know that 40 to 50% of the deaths are occurring in people who are in longterm care facilities who are older," he said.