Argentina announced it will begin administering doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine later this month.

"When the Russian vaccine is in Argentina, the first person to get it will be me,” President Alberto Fernandez said. “I have no doubt in the quality of the vaccine.”

Russia on Saturday began vaccinations with Sputnik V, which hasn't yet gone through the late-stage trials required in the U.S.

The speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Richard “Dick” Hinch, has died from COVID-19 at the age of 71, the state’s attorney general said.

Hinch was just elected speaker last week.

ABC News’ Ben Stein contributed to this report.

Jonathan Greene, deputy assistant secretary for operations and resources at the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledged in a briefing call that the agency is not able to provide the number of health care workers states are requesting.

HHS and FEMA have been "very judicious" in using and moving health care workers, providing 300 to 400 nationwide, which matches the number deployed during the first surge in the spring, Greene said. Fewer were deployed over the summer, mimicking the case curve.

About 3,100 can be deployed nationally, but Greene admitted the system is designed more for situations like hurricanes than for pandemics.

“It works less well when we're talking about a pandemic where everyone needs all of these providers all at once. And certainly when we activate and deploy these people and take them out of their full-time jobs and put them somewhere else, it reduces the capacity in the places where they come from,” he said.

Greene said the agency has encouraged the use of non-traditional health care providers in order "to bridge the gap."

ABC News' Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.

Ellen DeGeneres said Thursday that she’s tested positive for COVID-19 and is “feeling fine.”

“Anyone who has been in close contact with me has been notified, and I am following all proper guidelines,” the talk show host said.

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.