People over 75, front-line essential workers should get vaccine next, CDC panel says

A COVID-19 vaccine will be authorized in the European Union "within a week," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced Wednesday.

"Finally, within a week, the first vaccine will be authorized so that vaccinations can start immediately, and more will follow in the new year," von der Leyen said in an address to lawmakers at the European Parliament in Brussels. "In total, we have bought more than enough doses for everyone in Europe."

The EU's 27 member states will all be able to launch mass immunization programs on "the same day" that the vaccine is approved, according to von der Leyen.

"To get to the end of the pandemic, we will need up to 70% of the population vaccinated," she said. "This is a huge task, a big task. So let's start as soon as possible with the vaccination together, as 27, with a start at the same day."

The European Medicines Agency, the drug regulator for the European Union, announced Tuesday that a special meeting to discuss conditional authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech will be moved up to Dec. 21. The meeting was originally scheduled for Dec. 29. The move comes amid mounting pressure on the agency after the United States and the United Kingdom both granted emergency-use authorization of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and began immunization campaigns.

ABC News' Aicha El Hammar Castano and Ibtissem Guenfoud contributed to this report.

There were 137,897 people who were vaccinated against COVID-19 across the United Kingdom in the first seven days of the country's mass immunization program, according to Nadhim Zahawi, the U.K. minister in charge of the vaccine rollout.

Zahawi said 108,000 people were administered the vaccine in England, 7,897 in Wales, 4,000 in Northern Ireland and 18,000 in Scotland.

"A really good start to the vaccination program," Zahawi wrote on his official Twitter account Tuesday morning. "That number will increase as we have operationalised hundreds of PCN (primary care networks)."

On Dec. 2, the United Kingdom became the first Western country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine, granting emergency-use authorization to one developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. The U.K. government launched a mass immunization program just six days later, administering the shot to people over the age of 80 and front-line health workers.

There were 198,357 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Tuesday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It's the 43rd straight day that the U.S. has reported over 100,000 newly diagnosed infections. Tuesday's tally is down from the country's all-time high of 231,775 new cases confirmed on Dec. 11, according to Johns Hopkins data.

An additional 3,019 deaths from the disease were also registered nationwide on Tuesday, just under a peak of 3,300 fatalities on Dec. 11, according to Johns Hopkins data. It's only the third time since the pandemic began that the country has reported more than 3,000 COVID-19 deaths in a single day.

A total of 16,724,772 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 303,849 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.

While the United States continues to see rising numbers of people being hospitalized for COVID-19 or dying from the disease, one part of the country appears to be showing some progress, according to data collected and published by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak.

Daily COVID-19 hospitalizations reached an all-time high of 112,816 on Tuesday, while 189,783 new cases of COVID-19 and 2,918 deaths from the disease were reported nationwide. The country's seven-day averages for COVID-19 hospitalizations -- 109,031 -- and deaths -- 2,472 -- were also record highs, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

However, the data showed progress in the Midwest, with states like Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin seeing a decline in reported cases over the past month, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

"In the Midwest, current hospitalizations have continued to fall. As the other regions keep rising, the Northeast or West could soon have the most hospitalizations per capita," the group wrote on Twitter Tuesday.