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

Los Angeles County recorded 131 new deaths Wednesday, the highest number since the pandemic began, according to health officials.

The grim milestone comes as the county continues to see huge jumps in new cases and hospitalizations in the last couple of weeks, according to L.A. County Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer.

From Nov. 1 to Dec. 16, the number of Los Angeles residents hospitalized with COVID-29 rose from 791 to 4,456, according to Ferrer. She said it could reach 5,000 by Monday.

"As we continue to see more cases and more hospitalizations, increases in daily deaths will stay on this very tragic and troubling course for some time," Ferrer said during the daily news conference.

The county recorded 21,411 new cases on Wednesday, but Ferrer noted that the new data includes a backlog of approximately 7,000 cases.

From Nov. 1 through Dec. 8, the average number of new daily cases increased by 656%, according to Ferrer. 

"In the past week and a half, we have seen cases increase from an average of about 5,900 cases each day in the last week of November to an average of 9,264 the second week in December," she said.

-ABC News' Cammeron Parrish

Moncef Slaoui, President Donald Trump’s top science adviser in the vaccine effort, expects the vast majority of seniors in the country to be vaccinated by the end of March, he told CNBC's "Health Returns.”

About 120 million Americans are over the age of 65. While vaccine doses are just starting to reach nursing homes, Slaoui said he expects pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens to begin offering shots in February to seniors living outside long-term care facilities.

Because two doses are required, Slauoi said he expects it will take until the end of March to immunize about 100 million of the nation’s seniors.

ABC News’ Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.

California reported a record high of 53,711 new cases Wednesday -- a 3.3% increase from Tuesday.

Of Wednesday's new cases, 21,411 were in Los Angeles County alone. However, that total includes about 7,000 backlogged cases.

This surpassed the previous daily case record of 35,729, which was reported on Dec. 11.

The Golden State recorded 293 additional deaths on Wednesday, up 1.4% from Tuesday.

Twitter said that starting next week, the company will “prioritize the removal of the most harmful misleading information, and during the coming weeks, begin to label Tweets that contain potentially misleading information about the vaccines.”

Beginning early next year, the company said it may “label or place a warning on Tweets that advance unsubstantiated rumors, disputed claims, as well as incomplete or out-of-context information about vaccines.”