A Florida utility company asked Orlando residents to limit their water usage as liquid oxygen, which is used to treat COVID patients as well as help purify and clean water, is in short supply amid record COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Orlando Utilities Commission asked residents to limit watering their lawns "immediately" in a statement posted to Twitter Friday afternoon.

"A regional shortage of liquid oxygen linked to the surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations is impacting OUC's ability to treat drinking water," the company said.

The company said it needs to conserve up to half the water used daily until supplies return to normal while asking people to limit their non-critical water usage for at least two weeks.

"If OUC's liquid oxygen supplies continue to be depleted and water usage isn't reduced, water quality may be impacted," the company said in an update on its website.

OUC provides water service to about 140,000 customers, according to Orlando ABC affiliate WFTV.

The Florida Hospital Association reported a record 16,973 COVID-19 hospitalizations on Thursday. More than half of adults in intensive care units have COVID-19, it said.

The U.S. reported the highest single-day COVID-19 case total in nearly seven months overnight, with just under 158,000 new cases, according to federal data.

The daily case average in the U.S. has surged to approximately 133,000 a day, up by nearly 14% in the last week and more than 1,040% in the last two months, an ABC News analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

The South has the highest case rates in the country, led by Mississippi and followed by Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

The national case total now stands at nearly 37.3 million, which means one in approximately every eight Americans has tested positive for the virus.

The U.S. is also experiencing its steepest increases in COVID-19-related hospitalizations since the winter of 2020. More than 93,000 patients are now hospitalized across the country with COVID-19, according to federal data.

The country's average daily COVID-19 deaths stands at 640, an increase of 233% in the last six weeks and the highest in four months.

-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos

The University of Virginia has cut 238 students from its rolls after they failed to comply with the university's vaccination policy, school officials confirmed to ABC news.

"We first announced this vaccination requirement on May 20 and the deadline for compliance was July 1," Brian Coy, a spokesman for the university, told ABC News in an email.

"Since then, students received multiple reminders about this policy and the need to either be vaccinated or request a medical or religious exemption. Students who remained out of compliance after the deadline received multiple communications in the form of emails, texts, phone calls, and in some cases phone calls to their parents. The University’s vaccination policy was also covered extensively on our digital platforms, our daily news product, the student newspaper, and local media all over Virginia."

The university has given the students until Aug. 25 to comply or they won't be allowed to come back school in the fall.

-ABC News' Will McDuffie

Two hundred million Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, the White House announced Friday. That figure includes more than 1 million doses administered in 24 hours on Thursday, 534,000 of which were first doses.

"Today we hit a milestone: 200M people w/ at least one dose!" Cyrus Shahpar, the White House's COVID-19 data director, wrote on Twitter. "On avg., over 33,000 people have gotten their first dose, every hour of every day since mid-Dec 2020. Keep it up!"

-ABC News' Joshua Hoyos