Coronavirus updates: 1st vaccines now on the way to all 50 US states

Two main trucks left the Pfizer facility on Sunday morning, the company said.

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 71.5 million people and killed over 1.6 million worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.


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Another record-breaking day for LA County  

Los Angeles County reported a new high for COVID-19 cases on Friday, topping the record set the day before.

There were 13,815 new cases reported on Friday, surpassing Thursday's record by nearly 1,000.

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer attributed the surge to Thanksgiving gatherings.

"The impact of these Thanksgiving surges of cases, on top of already rising cases, is creating extraordinary stress," she said at a briefing. "Should this be followed by another surge related to the winter holiday, the numbers of hospitalizations and patients in the ICU could become catastrophic."

There are 3,624 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19. In two weeks, that could be over 7,300 people, Ferrer warned, if the average number of cases and hospitalizations continue to climb.

-ABC News' Bonnie Mclean and Cammeron Parrish contributed to this report


HHS buys another 100 million doses of Moderna vaccine

The Department of Health and Human Services said it’s buying another 100 million doses of Moderna's vaccine candidate, which is scheduled for review by the FDA advisory committee next Thursday.

The federal government will now own a total 200 million doses of the Moderna vaccine.

ABC News’ Stephanie Ebbs contributed to this report.


White House suggests FDA chief's job on line if vaccine isn't authorized by end of day

In a Friday phone call, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows suggested to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn that his job could be on the line if his agency doesn't authorize emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by the end of the day, sources familiar with the matter said.

"We don’t comment on private conversations, but the chief regularly requests updates on progress toward a vaccine," a White House official told ABC News.

Vaccine authorization by the FDA is expected imminently, as early as today.

ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and John Santucci contributed to this report.


Fauci says he’ll get vaccinated publicly

Dr. Anthony Fauci told The New York Times that he'll “get vaccinated publicly, in the public space, so that people can see me getting vaccinated,” as soon as “the vaccine becomes available to me.”

Former Presidents Barack Obama, George Bush and Bill Clinton have all offered to get vaccinated on camera.

The Food and Drug Administration as early as today could authorize emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.


US reports over 192,000 new cases

There were 192,299 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It's the 35th straight day that the U.S. has reported over 100,000 newly diagnosed infections. Monday's tally is less than the country's all-time high of 227,885 new cases confirmed on Dec. 4, according to Johns Hopkins data.

An additional 1,404 deaths from the disease were also registered nationwide on Monday, down from a peak of 2,879 fatalities on Dec. 3, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over Thanksgiving followed by a potentially very large backlog from the holiday.

A total of 14,954,331 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 283,746 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.