About 41 West Virginian patients who earlier received the Regeneron monoclonal antibody treatment instead of the Moderna vaccine ultimately got their first shot of a vaccine Thursday, the West Virginia National Guard told ABC News.

The patients were among the 44 people who were identified on Dec. 31 as receiving the wrong treatment at a vaccination clinic hosted by staff at the Boone County Health Department.

The National Guard did not say which vaccine those patients received when they got the correct shot.

Their first shots come despite recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that patients who receive monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma should defer vaccinations for at least 90 days.

-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech have plans to begin offering their COVID-19 vaccine to clinical trial volunteers who received placebo by March 1, several months earlier than initially planned, STAT reported.

The FDA and its advisers had pushed hard for volunteers to remain on placebo as long as possible to gather more safety and efficacy data about the vaccines, while the companies argued that volunteers should receive the vaccines sooner for both ethical and practical reasons.

-ABC News' Eric M. Strauss

New York state saw 166 deaths Thursday -- the highest number of deaths in a single day since May 12.

On Thursday, 219,523 test results were reported to New York state, and 7.52% were positive, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office reported.

There were 7,886 patient hospitalizations statewide, 1,292 patients in intensive care units and 776 intubated.

-ABC News' Joshua Hoyos

340,000 people have been vaccinated to date in Texas, out of the state's received allotment of 786,000 vaccination doses, according to data from Texas Health and Human Services.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner also authorized the Houston Health Department to open the city's first free COVID-19 vaccination clinic on Jan. 2. The clinic will expand vaccine access to the general public at high risk of severe illness and death from coronavirus disease, according to a statement from Texas health officials.

Texas' health department received its first allotment of 3,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine and started administering it on December 28.

The Houston Health Department will announce additional free vaccination opportunities as supply increases.

-ABC News' Gina Sunseri

U.K. health authorities on Sunday reported 54,990 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 454 additional deaths from the disease, bringing the respective totals to 2,654,779 cases and 75,024 fatalities.

"What we're doing clearly is grappling with a new variant of the virus which is surging particularly in London and the southeast," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.

Johnson said he felt it was important to stress that the threat to kids, young people and (school) staff "is really very very very small indeed" and that parents should send their children to primary school on Monday as long as they are open. But he warned they may need to impose tougher measures in many parts of the country.

"I'm fully fully reconciled to that," he said.

On Saturday, the United Kingdom's National Education Union (NEU) said in a statement that they have made the "difficult decision" to advise members in primary schools that it is unsafe for them to be in school due to "crowded buildings with no social distancing, no PPE and inadequate ventilation," and move to remote learning.

"If Government does not act to follow the science, we must," the NEU said.

-ABC News' Christine Theodorou