COVID-19 vaccinations are expected to begin in Germany "in the very first days" of 2021, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff.

In an online interview Sunday with German newspaper Bild, Helge Braun said he and Merkel will get vaccinated "when it's our turn." The trained doctor also noted that he's prepared to help vaccinate people himself.

"That won’t work at every hour of the day or night as chief of staff, but at the weekend I’m prepared to join in," Braun told the Bild.

The European Union's drug regulator is expected to make a decision by Dec. 29 on approving the first COVID-19 vaccine for use. In the meantime, Germany is preparing special vaccination centers.

There were 175,663 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Sunday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It's the 34th straight day that the U.S. has reported over 100,000 newly diagnosed infections. Sunday's tally is less than the country's all-time high of 227,885 new cases confirmed on Dec. 4, according to Johns Hopkins data.

An additional 1,114 deaths from the disease were also registered nationwide on Sunday, down from a peak of 2,879 fatalities on Dec. 3, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over Thanksgiving followed by a potentially very large backlog from the holiday.

A total of 14,760,627 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 282,312 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. 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 over the summer.

The numbers lingered around 40,000 to 50,000 from mid-August through early October before surging again to record levels, crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4 and reaching 200,000 for the first time on Nov. 27.

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.