California is in the middle of its “most intense surge to date,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.

The 14-day positivity rate has climbed to 10.7% -- the highest since the first few weeks of the pandemic, Newsom said.

California reported another 142 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours. One month ago, the seven-day average for daily deaths was 41. Now, the seven-day average is 163 lives lost per day, he said.

The state's coroners mutual aid and mass fatality program -- a statewide system that aides local coroners and sheriffs during mass fatality events -- has been activated, the governor said. He said 5,000 additional body bags have been ordered.

Hospitalizations are also on the rise. Newsom said intensive care unit admissions have jumped 54% in the last two weeks.

Hospitals in the state’s San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions are especially strained, with ICU availability at 1.6% and 1.7%, respectively.

ABC News’ Alex Stone and Cammeron Parrish contributed to this report.

A new CDC report found that children were more likely to get COVID-19 at a social gathering without masks or distancing than at school.

The CDC said the study found that children and adolescents with COVID-19 "were more likely than were similarly aged participants who had negative test results to have had reported close contact with a person with confirmed COVID-19 and less likely to have had reported consistent mask use by students and staff members inside the school facility."

ABC News’ Sony Salzman and Adjoa Smalls-Mantey contributed to this report.

The U.S. has recorded nearly 2.9 million cases in the first two weeks of December and is on track to become the worst month on record for COVID-19 cases, according to ABC News’ analysis of data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations have surged to unprecedented levels, with over 110,000 patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 across the country -- a record high for the ninth consecutive day.

Nearly 40,000 people are currently hospitalized in the South, which has surpassed the surge from the summer.
 
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.

The FDA has authorized the first at-home COVID-19 test that doesn't require a prescription and provides results within 20 minutes.

The Ellume COVID-19 Home Test is an antigen test that detects fragments of proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 virus on a nasal swab and then reports results to your phone.

“Today’s authorization is a major milestone in diagnostic testing for COVID-19,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement. “By authorizing a test for over-the-counter use, the FDA allows it to be sold in places like drug stores, where a patient can buy it, swab their nose, run the test and find out their results in as little as 20 minutes.”

The test "correctly identified 96% of positive samples and 100% of negative samples in individuals with symptoms," the FDA said. "In people without symptoms, the test correctly identified 91% of positive samples and 96% of negative samples."

The company says it will deliver 20 million at-home tests, which are manufactured in Australia, to the U.S. in the first half of 2021.

ABC News’ Stephanie Ebbs contributed to this report.