There were 787,000 new unemployment claims filed in one week, according to the Labor Department. This number is slightly lower than last week's, but still higher than anything seen before the pandemic.

There are currently 19,563,905 total claims being filed for unemployment through different government programs.

ABC News’ Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.

The U.S. has seen a record high daily death toll for the second day in a row, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

There were 3,744 COVID-19 deaths reported Wednesday, the highest since start of the pandemic, surpassing the previous record of 3,725 deaths reported Tuesday.

In the wake of the Trump administration falling short on its vaccination goal, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told "Good Morning America" Thursday, “We always knew that this was going to take a while to ramp up."

"The curve is rapidly increasing, in terms of number of people being vaccinated," Adams said. "So we shouldn't extrapolate from what happened yesterday to what's going to happen six months from now. What we should do is make sure that curve continues to go up and continue to support our state and public health departments, which is what we are doing."

The Trump administration had promised that 20 million people would be vaccinated by the end of the year.

As of Wednesday morning, 2,794,588 Americans had received vaccine doses and 12.4 million doses had been distributed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"There's vaccines manufactured. There's vaccines allocated. There’s vaccines delivered. And then there's vaccines put in arms,” Adams said. “From a federal perspective, we are on track to have 20 million people able to be vaccinated, doses on the ground, by the end of next week.”

Adams also urged Americans to celebrate New Year's Eve virtually.

“This has been a marathon, but we don't want to trip at the finish line,” Adams said. “We want to have a normal New Year’s next year, we want as many of our loved ones and family and friends as possible to be able to enjoy that New Year’s in 2021. The way we do that is by pulling together and sacrificing one more time so that we can ramp up these vaccinations and put this virus away for good.”

ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.

The U.S. reported 3,903 deaths on Wednesday, a new record for daily fatalities, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations also reached a record high with 125,220 and there were 225,671 new cases, according to the tracking project.

"Holiday reporting delays are still markedly affecting testing, case, and deaths figures," the group tweeted.

The COVID Tacking Project said the death count included a backlog of 200 fatalities from Washington state.

"Even without this backlog, today's total would still be the highest to date," the tracking project tweeted.

It warned that more data disruptions are expected with the New Year's Day weekend.

Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spoke to "Good Morning America" Monday morning to discuss the new coronavirus variant taking over the U.K.

"We don't have proof that it's here, but we do suspect that it is likely here, given the global interconnectedness," Giroir said. "We have no evidence that it's here. It's certainly not widespread here, but we need to look and make sure it's not here."

He added that while "there is increasing evidence that it really is more transmissible" or contagious, due to the viral load that people with that strain have been shown to have, there is "no evidence that it is more serious."

There is no evidence that people who become infected with the variant are more likely to be hospitalized or die, Giroir said.

"And we still believe -- don't have absolute proof -- but we have very good evidence and a good belief that the vaccines will still be effective," he added.