There were 134,339 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Monday's case count is far less than the country's all-time high of 300,282 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 2,031 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Monday, down from a peak of 4,466 new deaths on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend.

A total of 26,321,457 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 443,365 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.

So far, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use -- one developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and another developed by American biotechnology company Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. More than 32 million vaccine doses have been administered nationwide, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are 93,536 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, according to data compiled by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak.

The number represents a decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations nationwide over the last couple of weeks. The daily count reached as high as 130,000, data shows.

"Compared to last week, the number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 is down by 10% or more in 38 states," The COVID Tracking Project said on Twitter Monday.

-ABC News' Gabriel Ware

New Jersey's six mass COVID-19 vaccination sites will be closed Tuesday due to a winter storm that's grounded planes and halted subways across the Northeast region. New Jersey health care providers will reach out via text, email or phone to reschedule canceled appointments, according to the governor's office.

COVID-19 vaccination sites in New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Philadelphia and parts of Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia were also affected by the snowstorm on Monday.

-ABC News' Joshua Hoyos contributed to this report.

South Africa's coronavirus czar lamented unequal COVID-19 vaccine distribution between rich and poor nations, calling it "disheartening," in an interview Monday with ABC News. "The part of it that is most distressing is the way in which vaccines are being unevenly distributed," said Salim Abdool Karim, chairman of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19.

No single country can vaccinate its own population and think that it can stay safe while new virus variants emerge in parts of the world without vaccines, he explained. "That simply is a recipe for disaster."

Karim's comments follow similar criticism from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last week, who accused wealthy nations of "hoarding" excess vaccine doses that they did not immediately need.

ABC News' James Longman contributed to this report.

January marked the nation's deadliest month of the coronavirus pandemic, with a death total approximately four times the reported number of COVID-19 deaths recorded by the U.S. in any month between June and October 2020, according to an ABC News' analysis of data compiled by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak.

In total, the virus has claimed the lives of over 440,000 people in the U.S., which translates to about 1 in every 747 Americans, according to an ABC News analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. death toll is approximately 147 times the total lives lost during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and is around 65% of the total number of deaths that were recorded nationwide during the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Although the country's seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths appears to be plateauing, the U.S. is still reporting an average of just over 3,100 new deaths from the disease per day, according to The COVID Tracking Project data.

More than 6 million COVID-19 infections were diagnosed nationwide during the month of January, making it the country's second-worst month of the pandemic in terms of confirmed cases, data shows.

Over the weekend, the country's cumulative tally of confirmed cases surpassed 26 million, which signifies that one in every 12 Americans has now tested positive for COVID-19. However, the national seven-day average of daily COVID-19 cases has dropped by 32.3%, the lowest average the country has seen since mid-November, according to The COVID Tracking Project data.

COVID-19 hospitalizations also continue to decline rapidly across the country. The number of COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized nationwide is the lowest since late November.

In total, more than 800,000 people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, according to The COVID Tracking Project data.

ABC News' Brian Hartman and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.