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

A staggering 299,087 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in the United States on Saturday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It's the highest tally of newly diagnosed COVID-19 infections that a country has recorded in a 24-hour reporting period since the start of the pandemic.

An additional 2,398 deaths from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide on Saturday, down from a peak of 3,750 on Dec. 30, according to Johns Hopkins data.

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

A total of 20,430,088 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 350,214 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.