Coronavirus updates: 1st vaccines now on the way to all 50 US states
Two main trucks left the Pfizer facility on Sunday morning, the company said.
A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 71.5 million people and killed over 1.6 million worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
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White House suggests FDA chief's job on line if vaccine isn't authorized by end of day
In a Friday phone call, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows suggested to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn that his job could be on the line if his agency doesn't authorize emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by the end of the day, sources familiar with the matter said.
"We don’t comment on private conversations, but the chief regularly requests updates on progress toward a vaccine," a White House official told ABC News.
Vaccine authorization by the FDA is expected imminently, as early as today.
ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and John Santucci contributed to this report.
Fauci says he’ll get vaccinated publicly
Dr. Anthony Fauci told The New York Times that he'll “get vaccinated publicly, in the public space, so that people can see me getting vaccinated,” as soon as “the vaccine becomes available to me.”
Former Presidents Barack Obama, George Bush and Bill Clinton have all offered to get vaccinated on camera.
The Food and Drug Administration as early as today could authorize emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
California reports more record highs
California reported 35,468 new cases on Friday and 12,940 hospitalizations, both record highs.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued stay-at-home orders to regions if their intensive care unit capacity falls below 15%. The San Joaquin Valley, Southern California and the Greater Sacramento region all have fallen below that threshold, while the Bay Area and Northern California have not.
ABC News’ Matt Fuhrman contributed to this report.
US sets records for new cases, deaths, hospitalizations
The U.S. has set new records for the most deaths in one week, the highest number of new cases in a week and the most Americans hospitalized in one week, according to ABC News’ analysis of COVID Tracking Project data.
In the past seven days, the U.S. has reported more than 1.4 million COVID-19 cases -- roughly equivalent to 142 Americans testing positive for the virus every minute.
Daily case numbers have been on the rise for nearly three months, increasing nationally by 480% since mid-September.
The U.S. broke a hospitalization record again on Thursday, surpassing 107,000 patients, a 6.5% rise from a week earlier. Fifteen states have reported record numbers since Sunday.
With the U.S. is now averaging over 2,300 new coronavirus related deaths a day, more Americans are dying from COVID-19 every day than ever before.
“We are in the timeframe now that probably for the next 60 to 90 days we're going to have more deaths per day than we had at 9/11 or we had at Pearl Harbor,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said Thursday at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.
In the 9/ll attacks, almost 3,000 Americans died, and more than 2,400 were killed when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.
US averaging nearly 2,200 COVID-19 deaths per day for 1st time
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.