North Carolina has identified its first case of the coronavirus’ United Kingdom variant, state health officials said.

The variant was confirmed in an adult in Mecklenburg County.

The U.S. has 195 confirmed cases of the variant across 21 states, according to North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services.

ABC News’ Josh Hoyos contributed to this report.

COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are going down across the country.

In 44 states, the seven-day average of new cases has dropped over 10% since last week, The COVID Tracking Project reported Thursday. Daily cases are rising in only one state -- Virginia.

In 24 states, the number of current hospitalizations decreased by more than 10% from a week ago, it found. Everywhere else in the nation, hospitalizations are relatively flat.

United Airlines' top executive said he would like the airline to require COVID-19 vaccination for employees.

"I think the right thing to do is for United Airlines, and for other companies, to require the vaccines," CEO Scott Kirby said during an employee town hall Thursday. "That said, we have to have the logistic challenges worked out … and we need some others to show leadership, particularly in the health care industry."

Kirby told employees that if other companies mandate vaccines, "You should probably expect United to be amongst the first wave of companies that do it as well."

For now, United is urging employees to get the vaccine as soon as possible, according to an internal memo obtained by ABC News.

On an earnings call yesterday, an executive said the company has been working with local governments "to move our employees up in prioritization of essential workers for vaccination, both for their safety and the safety of our customers."

-ABC News' Gio Benitez

Two people -- a man and a child -- were identified as the first cases of the United Kingdom variant in New Jersey, officials said.

The Ocean County man, who is in his 60s, had no travel history or clear exposures to others who were ill, said the state’s Health Commissioner, Judy Persichilli.

He developed symptoms on Dec. 29 and was tested one week later. His “symptoms have since resolved and he was never hospitalized,” Persichilli said.

The child, who had traveled to northern New Jersey, was tested on Jan. 11 in New York City and is asymptomatic, she said.

ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.

There were 174,513 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 first time in two weeks that the country has logged under 200,000 newly confirmed infections in a 24-hour reporting period. Sunday's tally is far less than the country's all-time high of 302,506 new cases on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 1,723 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Sunday, down from a peak of 4,462 new deaths on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the holiday weekend and earlier holidays.

A total of 23,936,772 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 397,600 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, then reaching 200,000 on Nov. 27 before topping 300,000 on Jan. 2.